malaysiakini and the PROBLEM with UNELECTED OFFICIALS

As Malaysians are denied the basic right of electing local government officals like city mayors, we are a good example of "taxation without representation".
This malaysiakini article KL mayor the 'frequent flyer' indicates the nature of the problem.
According to the story, the KL mayor incurred costs of RM1.329mil on overseas trips. There are few details on how the costs were incurred but if we assume each trip costs say RM20,000, he would have made 68 trips.
If we take his term to be 4 years that works out to be 17 tours each year or more than one trip a month.
What on earth is a mayor doing on so many overseas trips? Even if he is an elected official, City Hall should justify such trips. No wonder they come out with such silly programs like renaming roads when there are more urgent matters like:

1.The police beat that was considered "dangerous" by the Home Minister and had to be moved to a safer place.
2.Poorly maintained drainage that turn some roads into rivers when there are sudden thunderstorms. How about renaming such a road as "Jalan Jadi Sungei". That could turn out to be a major tourist attraction.

The City Mayor is a post that could justify perhaps 3 or 4 overseas trips provided the budget is in surplus.