IGP Must Go !

KUALA LUMPUR, July 28 – Lim Kit Siang today slammed the Prime Minister’s crime reduction target saying that it was four years too late, and demanded the country’s top cop be held accountable for the high crime rate.

“Najib’s KPI for crime prevention to reduce street crime by 20 per cent in 2010 is late by four years and should have covered all categories of crime as proposed by the Dzaiddin Police Royal Commission in its report in May 2005,” said Lim, referring to the commission formed in 2004 to improve the force.

The commission had then proposed for the crime rate to be reduced by 20 per cent in 12 months, he added.

Lim was speaking at the opening of a round-table forum entitled, ‘New Inspector-General of Police for a Safe Malaysia’ at Parliament House here this morning.

Yesterday Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced a target to reduce the street crime rate by 20 per cent in 2010 as one of the key performance indicators (KPI) of the six national key results area.

The roundtable was convened to call on the government to appoint a new IGP and not to extend Tan Sri Musa Hassan’s service.

“When the Dzaiddin Royal Police Commission submitted its final report in May 2005, it said that Malaysia’s reputation as a safe country was ‘seriously dented’ by the ‘dramatic increase’ in the incidence of crime in the past few years,”said the Ipoh Timor MP.

“Instead of achieving the Police Royal Commission’s target of reducing the intolerably high incidence of crime of 156,455 cases in 2004 by 20 per cent in 12 months (i.e. 125,164 cases), the reverse took place,” he added.

Lim pointed out that from 2004, when the commission report was tabled to last year, the crime index has increased by 35.5 per cent.

The veteran parliamentarian added that based on the increased crime rate alone Musa should have resigned and his contract should not be renewed.

“The re-appointment of Musa for another term of IGP cast an adverse aspersion on all the senior police officers, as if there is not a single one out of the eight top police officers occupying key police positions below the post of IGP who are qualified or competent enough to become the new IGP to provide a new police leadership and culture to roll back the tide of crime in the past five years,” said Lim.

Musa reached his retirement age in 2007, but has continued to serve for another two years with his extension scheduled to expire in September.

It is understood that the Police Commission has recommended another extension for him.