By Syauqi Jamil
PETALING JAYA: In ensuring a smoother administration of the government, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said that more ‘loyalist’ from the previous Barisan Nasional administration, lead by former premier Najib Razak will be dropped.
He said some of the ministries have faced difficulties in working with these ‘stubborn loyalists’, where salaries of newly appointed officials were not paid for up to four months.
“There are some who tried to avoid implementing government decisions. We found out that after the appointment of a certain officers for a minister, even after my approval, he was not paid salary. For four months he was not paid.
“This is because an officer responsible (to pay salary) felt that there was something not right with the appointment. After Cabinet decides to take action, only then was the salary paid,” he said.
Speaking in a press conference after Pakatan Harapan Presidential Council meeting here, Mahathir said that there are still many in the administration machinery who are still stubborn.
He said the government will have no choice but to get rid of the officials who refused to accept the Pakatan Harapan government appointees.
“They are still influenced by the previous government. I don’t know why but there’s many who are stubborn. To smoothen the administration, we need to reshuffle some post or drop a few,” he said.
Mahathir said this when he was asked if he was satisfied with Pakatan Harapan’s performance in administrating the government for the first 100 days.
Earlier, Mahathir revealed the findings from a survey conducted by independent social analytics firm, Berkshire Media which was conducted towards the end of the first 100 days, with a sample group of 487,000 respondants.
He said overall, there are more positive perception from the public towards the Pakatan Harapan governance rather than the negative ones.
“Although there are perception from the people that our administration couldn’t achieve the success that they had hoped for but many showed satisfaction towards PH’s governance to thia day,” he said.
Mahathir said among the areas that was heavily discussed was transportation matters, bringing corrupt leaders to justice as well as implementing and abolishing laws in Parliament.
