Punish the guilty, MACC told: KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 8 — The move to investigate civil servants by the Malaysian-Anti Corruption Agency (MACC) for corrupt practices has received strong support. Public Accounts Committee member Tony Pua said it was a good thing MACC had started investigations based on the Auditor-General’s Report 2012. “Everyone will now be eagerly awaiting the outcome of their investigations. Sadly, previous investigations into the A-G’s Report ended with the agency finding no element of corruption and saying civil servants had simply overpaid for products they bought,” he said. “Nobody would really believe this because MACC was claiming our civil servants were merely incompetent.” Pua said everyone in government needed to act to solve problems highlighted each year by the auditor-general. “By punishing the errant officers, we may see improvement but at the moment there seems to be no urgency for action.” Pua said the attorney-general had told him that 95 of the civil servants were mostly issued with warning letters. Transparency International Malaysia (TI-M) president Datuk Akhbar Satar said the report showed failings in the system due to non-compliance and poor attitude. Akhbar said government should look into the attitude of the “deadwood” in the civil services and take to task errant civil servants, or the country will continue to suffer from more losses every year. Akhbar also said a good example of wastage was the case of a senior officer from the Communications and Culture Ministry, who made a RM303,813 travel claim for a four-day study tour to Geneva, Switzerland. He said even if the officer had taken a return first-class flight, stayed in the best hotels, dined in fancy restaurants and given allowances to shop for winter clothing, the final tab would have cost no more than RM50,000. He said such claims should never have been allowed. dlvr.it/45mWpH
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 23:30:47 +0000
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