KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 12 — Putrajaya must punish harshly civil servants who mismanage the country’s funds or it will continue to see repeats of the leakages and wastage discovered annually by federal auditors, Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) said today.
The graft watchdog also lamented that Malaysia has failed to learn from the Auditor-General’s yearly audits on the use of public funds, claiming that the “entrenched lackadaisical attitude” was cultivated by Putrajaya’s alleged lack of effective action against the wrongdoers.
“TI-M, once again, strongly urges the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, to look not only into the growing number of outstanding cases of public projects where costs have escalated and possible abuse of public funds, but also to ensure that those who commit fraud, wrongdoers and those suspected of criminal breach of trust, cheating or leakages as identified in the audit report, are thoroughly investigated and stern punitive actions taken,” the Malaysian chapter of the international watchdog wrote in a statement today.
“Enough is enough — a strong message should be sent to all civil servants that their wrongdoings will not be tolerated and severe action will be taken including dismissal,” it said.
The statement comes after the final part of the three-part series in the Auditor-General’s Report 2013 was tabled in Parliament yesterday.
TI-M’s statement also comes just hours after the Chief Secretary to the Government, Tan Sri Ali Hamsa, revealed today that Putrajaya sacked only one officer out of 108 civil servants recommended for punitive action by the Auditor-General in its 2012 report, while other guilty officers were either fined or warned and had their emoluments frozen.
Ali also said that for the 2012 report, 100 out of 111 punitive recommendations were acted upon, with 85 of the 175 officials implicated being penalised while 23 were found to be innocent.
For the first two instalments of the 2013 report, Ali said 80 punitive recommendations were made and 19 recommendations involving 48 officers had been identified for disciplinary proceeding, also adding that there was no strong basis for action for 55 of these recommendations as they involved “weaknesses in the system, procedure and current regulations” instead of irregularities.
While praising the Auditor-General’s Department’s for tabling its report “without fear or favour”, TI-M also trotted off a list of mismanagement that had grabbed national headlines this week.
It noted that some ministries and government departments had displayed signs of improvement, but frowned on “similar inherent trends in poor procurement practices and lack of transparency” detected in some ministries.
One of the “alarming” examples cited by TI-M is the A-G Report’s discovery that the government forked out almost RM12 million as monthly pensions to dead army veterans between 2011 and 2013.
“What is most disappointing was that this is not an isolated incident, as similar overpayments were reported in the A-G Report 2012 in October last year, where welfare assistance was paid out to 145 dead people in three states,” it said.
The watchdog recommended that all ministers and ministry secretary-general’s be held “accountable” for the failures in managing projects and avoiding leakages, also saying that Putrajaya should terminate contracts that are unfavourable to the public.
It claimed that cutting down leakages in government procurements by just five per cent would translate into savings of billions in taxpayers’ funds.
