Citing the example of the RM100 million embezzlement at the Youth and Sports Ministry, Deputy Home Minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed said: “There were a lot of ‘buaya’ in the Youth and Sports Ministry recently. “

Speaking at the National Registration Department’s Award of Excellence ceremony, he pointed out that the Youth and Sports Ministry’s allocation of RM800 million was not as big as the Home Ministry’s RM12 billion annual allocation.

“Despite that (the low budget), that ministry’s staff still managed to ‘cari makan’ (make a living) from that budget.”

He urged his staff not to take bribes.

To reduce incidences of corruption, he said, the Home Ministry had instituted psychometric tests (standardised procedure for measuring such things as intelligence, aptitude and personality) for its officers.

He said this enabled the ministry to place those seen as having any tendency to take bribes in positions of less importance.

Nur Jazlan revealed that about 55,000 people had applied to work in the government sector last year and that 2,000 had been shortlisted for 300 positions nationwide.

Some of them were aged above 30 and held Masters degrees.