Lawmakers call on gov’t to correct flaws harming public interest

[Photo: Renato Marques]

Lawmakers Nick Lei and Chan Hao Weng have called on the government to address the flaws detected in the latest Audit report regarding the operation of public services and situations that are harmful to public interest.

This push was made through separate, unrelated spoken inquiries delivered at the Legislative Assembly during the period before the agenda.

First, Lei noted that the Commission of Audit (CA) stated in its latest annual activity report that six major issues had occurred or had been identified as harming the public interest and public purse.

The six observation areas include the structure of public services and the situation regarding staff allocation, the rationality and rigor of projects, the effectiveness of the use of dissemination resources, the use and management of vacant properties, as well as the financial operation of publicly owned companies and the management of project execution.

“Taking the launch of new public projects and services as an example, the report indicates that, to ensure that new technical solutions have sufficient grounds for decision-making, the adoption of new technical solutions must satisfy, at least, basic requirements such as necessity, feasibility and cost-effectiveness, and must be based on the overall benefits to society, and there must also be documents that clearly explain the respective grounds, excluding decisions without sufficient grounds,” Lei said, adding, “This demonstrates a lack of reasonableness and rigor in the implementation of the respective tasks by public services, which contradicts the principle of scientific governance.”

Regarding the use and management of unused properties, Lei continued, “the report proposes promoting their proper utilization through a comprehensive study and analysis of unused properties held by the Macao SAR and the needs of stakeholders. Taking into account the public interest, viable plans should be developed to promote the appropriate use of these properties and actively drive their utilization,” he quoted, noting that such facts demonstrate that “some public services adopt a negligent and passive attitude toward the use and management of unused properties, revealing a lack of initiative and responsibility that hinders the better use of public resources and assets and harms the public interest.”

Among his suggestions to address the issue, Lei noted that public services, “after defining the improvement measures referred to in the observation report, should disclose, on their own initiative, the results of the corrections to increase the transparency of government action. If the issues raised are not monitored or improved, the supervisory entity should take this situation as a reference for evaluating the performance of management personnel and for renewing the service commissioners.”

Lea also left a message to the CA itself, remarking that “despite identifying certain public services, [the reports] do not reveal which other publicly owned companies or institutions are involved. I suggest that, in the future, when work reports are published, the information from the entities involved should be disclosed so that the public sector can monitor them alongside society, thereby increasing the effectiveness of governance.”

In his inquiry, Chan also addressed the same issues, providing greater detail on some of the problems detected by the CA.

“The CA report refers to serious problems within the civil service: people in higher categories perform the duties of lower categories, and employees currently in active service also perceive it that way,” he said, remarking, “There are two extreme situations: some high-ranking employees deal, over the years, with simple documents and basic tasks, which constitutes a waste of human resources and public funds; [while] workers in middle and lower categories have assumed high-risk and high-pressure tasks, thus having great responsibility and a large volume of work, but the categories and benefits do not correspond to their duties.”

Chan remarked that the problem does not lie with the staff but with the heads of the bureaus or departments who have failed to plan their human resources needs properly and failed also to make a good distribution of work and proper supervision, a fact he reaffirmed “constitutes a violation of the rules defined in the civil service and affects the civil servants’ morale.”

Chan noted, as per the CA reports, something he said workers have been complaining about for some time: a clear increase in bureaucracy and excessive formalism in handling everyday situations.

He remarked that such an issue surpasses the bureaus and services and extends also to schools, in which he claims teachers are too occupied with administrative tasks and unnecessary activities, which take too much of their time and should be used to prepare and teach classes.

“Education is the foundation of the city, and teachers are the cornerstones. Constant pressure will only drag down the quality of education,” he said, while urging the Education and Youth Development authorities to strengthen supervision over the work in schools and to reduce some bureaucracies and formalism faced by teachers in schools, to give them back the time they need to teach.

He noted that these issues stem not only from rules or policies but, mostly, from a lack of accountability by those in charge of schools and institutions, which often exceed their competencies and authority without any consequences.