KUALA LUMPUR, March 31 — Putrajaya's bid to provide subsidised rice to low-income Malaysians at the cost of hundreds of millions should be suspended for failing to meet objectives, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said today.
PAC chairman Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed said the watchdog considered the programme to have "failed" as the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry's aim of benefiting the poor was not achieved.
"We ask the secretary-general to come back at another time to explain what the ministry will do in the future, whether to continue with ‘ST15%’ or not. We suggest to the ministry to suspend the programme for the moment," the Pulai MP told reporters here.
According to Nur Jazlan, the government started the rice subsidy programme in 2008 with an allocation of RM300 million then.
The allocation was increased to RM488 million in 2011 and RM528 million last year.
"Last year alone is RM528 million, that's why the PAC consider it a waste if the target is not reached, but the government spends RM528 million a year," he said.
Nur Jazlan said there was no available statistics or estimates of subsidised rice that did not make it to low-income families, noting that the ministry did not even have a standard operating procedure in place to achieve its goal.
He said the Auditor General's Department had carried out an audit into the programme in 2011, and found in 2013 that the problem detected then was still not rectified.
The problem was with the distribution of the subsidised rice that was sold to wholesalers and hypermarkets with no restriction on who may buy them, he said.
As a result, some of the rice went to restaurant operators, traders and even foreigners instead of the targeted low-income groups they were intended for, he said.
