Friday, February 24, 2012

Inefficient and wasteful processes

I have made a statement that the Government collects a lot of taxes and spend some of the money wastefully. I want to quote a few examples:

1. Posh office buildings and furniture
2. Management consultants and computer systems
3. Online processes that save time for civil servants but adds many times of the burden on the public
4. Creates a lot of work to give payback to the citizens as refund for the high tax collected, e.g. GST offsets, progress package, economic growth package and the like

The amounts spent on some of these items are staggering - tens of million of dollars on items that could be avoided.

It would be much better for the government to collect less tax (e.g, abandon GST), reduce the price of land for public housing and simplify their compliance requirements. This will reduce the cost of living, cost of doing business, and make a large impact on improving the lives of the people.

I want to recognize the good aspects of the government - i.e. managing an economy that provides jobs for the people. So, I am not want to appear to be giving a negative judgement on the government.  I only want to point out some areas of wastefulness and inefficiency that should be recognized and dealt with.

Tan Kin Lian

3 comments:

C H Yak said...

@"I want to recognize the good aspects of the government - i.e. managing an economy that provides jobs for the people."

Nearly 30 yrs ago, I already studied the term "disguised unemployment"... Now in the New Normal they call it "boosting productivity by 2~3% annually to increase your real wages by 30% in 10 years' time".

To achieve that need to appoint more Management Consultants.

Better still send workers to NTUC for training sponsored by our National Budget. NTUC then employ more Trainers. LOL.

Unknown said...

I wish to state that it is also us Singaporeans that contributes to our very own high tax costs. Let me explain.

I work in an MNC under a project that allocates me to a government agency as an engineer providing IT service support.

There are times where the employees there (at the government agency) are are engaging us to perform really simple tasks like going up to a particular floor to note down the asset tag of a desktop.

All these services are payable to the MNC I am working for and is paid by the government agency I am based in which ultimately comes from us tax payers.

Sometimes I feel uncomfortable performing such tasks as I feel I am the one who is paying for the services which I perform.

I would like to know how the readers of tankinlian.blogspot feel about this.

michael13 said...

One of the posh buildings and furniture is Police Cantonment Complex(luxury glass building) at New Bridge Road. Spending large amounts of taxpayers' money to have built that buildig for a comfortable office environment, the government should instead, decentralise the operational police service by having more 24-hour NPP(Neighbourhood Police Post) around the island. Available funds diversify to productive use of having more new recruitments, good training of police officers and programme of interaction with the public greatly help to combat crime and reduce crime rate. After all, the nature of police work is to be out on the street and NOT to spend hours in a cosy office unnecessarily.

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