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The recent revelation of the ridiculous First Lady of Malaysia Division dedicated to Rosmah Mansor is bewildering and has yet again shown the inconsistency of the Barisan Nasional government in keeping the public informed.

In his reply to my parliamentary question in November 2010, Prime Minister Najib Razak had said that there is no full-time staff or contract staff specially assigned to his wife, Rosmah Mansor.

The prime minister is clearly contradicting himself when the official website of the Prime Minister’s Department included the ‘First Lady of Malaysia Division’ in the staff directory, under which five staff are employed, it would suggest, to work for the self-proclaimed ‘First Lady’ of Malaysia, Rosmah.

When the information was discovered and made public by certain media and by Seputeh MP Teresa Kok, the aforesaid information ‘mysteriously’ disappeared from the website. The truth about the allocation remains to be told.

In fact, the ‘newly discovered’ First Lady of Malaysia division was not mentioned in the four-volume Senarai Perjawatan Persekutuan (federal staff list), that forms part of the federal budget 2011 documents. Questions remain to be answered of how and how much the division has been allocated and what the function of the division is.

In the same directory we discovered that many advisors on specific issues are also listed, whose positions are similarly not allocated in the federal budget 2011.

This include Abdullah Md Zin as Advisor for Islamic affairs, Shahidan Kassim as advisor for matters on North Corridor Economic Region (NCER), Jalaludin Bahaudin as the media advisor, Mohammad Kamal Yan Yahaya as advisor for international relations, and Zakri Abd Hamid as the science advisor. Each of the advisors has one or more staff assisting them.

Indeed the Prime Minister’s Department is the biggest spender among the various ministries. The department receives RM15.8 billion this year (excluding the allocations for Attorney-General’s Chambers and the Public Service Department), a record amount compared to past years and has been more than doubled from the RM 6.87 billion allocation in 2007.

I press the prime minister to present a truthful reply on this issue and remain accountable to the people. Malaysians deserve to know how their money is being spent.

The writer is DAP MP for Bukit Bendera in Georgetown, Penang

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