Cabinet don't pay for their own damn holidays?!

I'm sure you all have read about how Najib says the "Government is sharing the burden". He is of course referring to the much publicised (and much lauded... by chronic ball-lickers NST) exercise to cut costs and expenses in the govt.

According to Star and Malaysiakini, the gist of the cuts are:

1. The entertainment allowances of ministers and deputy ministers will be slashed by 10%.

The Prime Minister currently enjoys a monthly entertainment allowance of RM18,865 while his deputy gets RM15,015. Other ministers and deputy ministers are given RM12,320 and RM6,000 respectively.

First question: Does a mere 10% reduction qualify as 'slashed'?

Aisehman has a hilarious hypothetical question on how a cabinet member like... say, Najib, would classify his entertainment expenses as public/govt if he entertains the DPM of Mongolia, or private if he entertains a beautiful young model from Mongolia.

End of the day, why would cabinet members need entertainment allowances? If the entertainment is for official purposes, the ministry would have already picked up the tab. If it's for his own private pleasure, why should the taxpayer pay for it?

2. The paid holidays of Cabinet members and their families holidays will now be limited to local and Asean destinations and will not be allowed to claim for more than a week’s holiday.

Wow! I didn't know that cabinet members AND their families get paid holidays to anywhere in the world, at the expense of taxpayers. With their salaries, entertainment allowances, travel allowances, housing allowances, MP's allowance and god knows what other allowances and perks - can't these bastards pay for their own farking holidays?

Can they really go anywhere in the world? US and Europe? Disneyland, Las Vegas?

For how long? (However long, it's definitely more than a week).

And how many people constitutes a family? Does it include the in-laws, brothers, sisters, parents etc? And is there a maximum number of family members? All 4 wives? All 20 kids?

Here's a hypothetical holiday bill (in US$) for a minister with 1 wife and 3 kids, to London for 2 weeks:

With 71 cabinet members (ref: wiki), this translates into an annual bill of RM8.7 million (71 x 123K).

And remember, the assumption is 1 holiday per cabinet member per year, 5 people in a family and a duration of 2 weeks.

Also, we're assuming that the cabinet member's family does not do a 'Rosmah'. ie. go shopping at Harrod's, and then walk out with armloads of stuff, leaving the foreign ministry to settle the bill.