PRESS STATEMENT
Wednesday, 2 October 2013
Auditor-General Report 2013 Shows More Serious Failure in the Systems Due to Non-Compliance and Poor Attitude
Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) strongly urge the government to stem out corrective action to be taken to address the findings in the Auditor-General Report 2012. Every year, it can only be a different set of examples highlighted by the Auditor-General’s report, but the same non-compliance pattern continues to attract media and public attention. Year in, year out!
Millions of Ringgit are still lost every year, when the losses could have been plugged with the Government taking a more serious effort to address the non-compliance issues, involving civil servants who adopt a lackasaidal attitude towards their job and the public funds that they are managing.
There can be no two ways about it. If they fail to comply, they should be immediately removed from their jobs instead of being given a desk job or reassigned to another department. Bad examples are set when senior staff continue to plunder the system, without fear of repercussion on their job security.
TI-M, therefore, also urge the Government to look into the attitude of the “dead wood” within the civil services. Without serious efforts to take to task the errant civil servants, the country will continue to suffer from more losses every year.
It will also make a mockery of the Government, when the Auditor-General’s reports are not being taken seriously after it has identified the shortcomings within the administration.
We believe that once the systems are in place, when there is non-compliance, it is the people managing the systems who have failed to heed the need to comply. Hence, for the Government Transformation Plan (GTP) to be effective, Pemandu and the Public Services Department (PSD) should step up its efforts to weed out the poor performers within our 1.4 million civil servants staff strength.
The Government should emulate the private sectors, where productivity and compliance are important to safeguard one’s job. TI-M feels that the civil service in Malaysia is currently a ‘fattened calf’ that needs to be trimmed down, especially when the economic times are tough. Unless the PSD steps up its efforts to remove civil servants who are found to be inefficient in the manner that they have managed public funds, such losses would be continue to cause a strain to the public coffers.
For example, in the area of procurement of military equipment and aircrafts, the Royal Malaysia Police Air Wing Unit had purchased the Beechcraft King Air 350 in 2005, which was done through direct negotiation with Hawker Pacific Airservices Ltd (HPA) through its local agent, EZ Aviation Sdn. Bhd. (EZA). The price for the purchase of five units of the plane was USD58.25 million, but the AG had found that the procurement of the planes did not follow the terms of the contract and the planes were delivered not according to schedule, besides the training provided to the pilots and aircraft engineers did not meet the original objectives. Failure of the senior military staff in supervising the procurement of the aircrafts is serious as it affects the effectiveness of our military defence. This is what TI-M in the past has on numerous occasions highlighted that the procurement of defence equipment which runs into the billions must always be done with greater transparency.
Another good example is TI-M is interested to know what the Ministry of Communications and Culture is doing about a senior officer who had made a RM303,813 travel claim for a four-day study tour to Geneva, Switzerland. Given that the officer, if he had taken a return first-class flight, stayed in the best hotels, wined and dined in fancy restaurants and was given allowances to shop for winter clothing, the final tab would have cost no more than RM50,000. Such claims should never have been allowed by the Ministry.
END
Issued by :
Dato’ Akhbar Satar, President Email : akhbar@transparency.org.my
Transparency International Malaysia
