KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 22 — Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming suggested today that the government scrap federal initiatives like the National Service and the 1Malaysia Milk programme for schools, insisting that this would help rein in government spending and save at least 10 per cent of taxpayers’ money.

He pointed out that the National Service Training Programme under the Defence Ministry costs RM712 million, which is almost the same amount set aside for the Youth and Sports Ministry’s 2012 budget, which was RM738 million.

“Just this one programme costs about the same as the budget for a whole ministry. This programme should be suspended and reviewed,” Ong told reporters at the Parliament lobby.

The DAP man also pointed out RM34.5 million could have been saved if the Royal Malaysian Navy had not overpaid for the dry ration contract, a discrepancy highlighted in the Auditor-General’s report.

“The AG’s report also reported the failure of the 1Malaysia milk programme which costs RM170 million but had only reached 40 per cent of its target because the milk was sent late and was stopped because after 175 cases of poisoning in 2011 and 2012.

“This programme does not bring any benefit to the students’ heath, and can be eliminated,” he said.

The former political analyst also brought up the contracts for school security services managament, the management of school building sanitation as well as the 116,399 Chromebooks bought through the “1Student1Device” programme for RM1,255 each, compared to the lower market price of RM988.

The Works Ministry, on the other hand, could have saved the RM1.1 billion squandered because of poor monitoring of projects and the failure to collect payments from contractors, he said.

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced yesterday that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) will delay rolling out the contentious goods and services tax (GST) and postpone any allowance increase for Cabinet ministers.

The opposition had previously said that subsidy rationalisation, a move that would mostly impact the lower income group, was unnecessary.

It instead argued that the budget deficit, now standing at just under 55 per cent of GDP, could easily be managed by “plugging leakages” and ending corruption.

Analysts are expecting further austerity measures to be introduced in the 2014 Budget to be tabled this Friday as Putrajaya aims to reverse Fitch Ratings downgrade in July.