Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) welcomes Public Accounts Committee chairman Dato’ Shahrir Abdul Samad’s important statement that transparency and accountability are expected in all government expenses.
Dato’ Shahrir added that there is a system within the Government to ensure that all expenses and projects are carried out with transparency and the system requires a tender committee to be set up for every project and the committee should have some selection and decision process. He further added that such a system must be implemented and applied to all expenses and projects, whether they were carried out locally or overseas.
TI-Malaysia believes that any waste (and theft) of public funds is unacceptable and severe action must be taken against the culprits, including dismissal, prosecution and a claim for restitution.
More importantly, we ask that the administrative systems and procedures of the ministries and agencies concerned be reviewed to stop all abuses. Any such leakages will affect our economic competitiveness directly as there is less funding available for development work.
Corruption is one of the major obstacles to economic progress, and its effects on development are disastrous with the poor being severely deprived of facilities and amenities that they deserved.
Obviously, in the process of implementation, government will get very poor value for its spending due to corrupt practices and abuses arising from the non adherence to sound rules and regulations.
TI-M calls upon government to immediately review the system and ensure better management of public funds. This can be done through a more active monitoring machinery that can be adopted by the Auditor-General’s Department on an on-going audit system, as in the private sector.
Similarly, the announcement of faster payments by government for goods and services, must give adequate attention to the certification of good performance on the part of suppliers and contractors. There could be a danger that fast payments may lead to less supervision of performance, which must not be sacrificed for the sake of speedy settlement with contractors.
There has to be a proper balance in the achievement of both objectives of speedy payments and quality performance, please. What taxpayers want is really “good value for their money”, without corruption.
Issued by
Tan Sri (Dr) Ramon V. Navaratnam
President
Transparency International Malaysia
