DECEMBER 14 — I read with interest news reports that Dewan Rakyat has launched a parliamentary application, MY Parl which will enable all quarters, including parliamentarians and the public, to access information on Parliament.

I went to the official portal of Parliament and searched for ‘penyata kewangan Lembaga Tabung Haji’.

I did it because, as I have written before, the Annual Report and Financial Statement of Lembaga Tabung Haji (LTH) is one that has to be laid before Parliament under section 8 of the Statutory Bodies (Accounts and Annual Reports) Act 1980 (Act 240).

The official portal of Parliament generated 12 results.

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Upon clicking at each of the results, only 2 resulted in the same Order Paper of Wednesday 16 August 2017 which recorded that the ‘Laporan Tahunan dan Penyata Kewangan Lembaga Tabung Haji Bagi Tahun 2016’ was tabled.

But no report and or financial statement of LTH for 2016, or for any year for that matter, was available online.

I went to the official website of Parliament of Singapore and searched for ‘financial statements’.

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The search engine generated 713 results (in less time than the Malaysian portal).

One of the results was the Financial Sector Development Fund (the Fund) Annual Report 2017/2018 which was presented to Parliament of Singapore pursuant to sections 34 and 132 of the Monetary Authority of Singapore Act (Chapter 186).

The report showed the duly audited financial statements of the Fund.

For good measures, I went to the official website of the UK Parliament. Again I searched for ‘financial statements’ which generated 32600 results, one of which was Channel 4 Annual Report for 2008. Channel 4 is a broadcaster which is publicly owned.

It is a statutory corporation, without shareholders, established and regulated under successive Broadcasting and Communications Acts.

Channel 4 is required to lay before the UK Parliament an Annual Report of its financial accounts and performance.

LTH is also required to lay its Annual Report of its financial accounts and performance to the Malaysian Parliament.

That is why, as I have written, parliamentarians like Datuk Seri Mujahid Yusof Rawa and Datuk Seri Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim should have access to the financial statements of account and should have said things based on the audited statements as laid before Parliament.

The public too should be able to have access to LTH financial statements through the official portal of Parliament and see for themselves whether there was a deficit of RM4.1 billion.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

The work is cut out for the Dewan Rakyat Speaker to reform Parliament, including its official portal which should be a depository of facts, and truth.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.