Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Problematic department to be queried after Raya

Several government departments, agencies and federal statutory bodies will be called up by the auditor-general's office after Hari raya to answer "discrepancies" mentioned in the 2007 Auditor-General's Report.
Parliment's Public Accounts Committee(PAC) chairman Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid told reporters yesterday an audit on 123 agencies,departments and bodies found 5% of them to be problematic.They will call the problematic ones to give their sides of the story to ascertain what went wrong and this will be done immediately after Hari Raya. PAC wants to prevent a recurrencce because the pevious trend of discrepancies highlighted in the report has always been the same. Azmi said the PAC strongly recommended to the government to appoint more internal auditors in ministries, departments,agencies and statutory bodies. They want to see more internal auditors, as front-liners, doing their work on a daily basis and they must be empowered to do more things.He added proper checks will prevent losses.
Azmi said that overall, the report was satisfactory as 117 of the 123 audited in 2007 were given a "clean bill of health".
He said those to be called for questioning include the Home; Natural Resources and Enviroment; Health; Education; and Defence Ministries and Kuala Lumpur City hall. Among projects and companies involved in the "discrepancies" highlighted in the report are Teluk Sepanggar naval base project in Sabah, CTRM(Composite Technology Research Malaysia Sdn. Bhd), which is 90% owned by the Ministry of Finance Inc. and the SMART Tunnel project in Sungai Besi.
Azmi also said that while the number of problematic agencies, department and bodies is small, the losses in terms of money could be big

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