YOURSAY 'How can we allow so much money to be lost through incompetence, recklessness, indifference and dishonesty?'

'Independent body needed to end financial abuse'

your say Anonymously: Year in and year out we read about the auditor-general's reports of blatant abuses running into staggering figures at taxpayers' expense and nothing concrete seems to be done.

The main culprits get away scot-free as usual. I am disappointed with the government for its inertia on this matter.

Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua is spot on with his suggestion that we have an independent Financial Accountability Commission (FAC) to look into this malaise and stop it once and for all.

The harshest legal actions must be meted out against all the perpetrators.

Ksn: That is actually the function of the PAC (Public Accounts Committee) set up by Parliament.

It will be interesting to know whether action, as recommended by PAC, has been taken against the heads of agencies and departments found not competent to handle the allocations properly under their control as approved by the Parliament in the annual budget.

If action has been found inadequate or simply not followed, then go for what Tony Pua is recommending and abolish the PAC at the same time.

PAC has a duty to monitor the developments of their decisions and recommendations. Or has the PAC's functions become just a annual ritual?

SusahKes: It is clear that the Prime Minister Najib Razak has little political will in addressing financial mismanagement by civil servants; after all, Umno needs their votes.

And what does our PM do? He rewards them with one and half month's bonus.

Onyourtoes: Tony Pua must understand, the whole realm of the public sector is constructed not for efficiency or for fulfilling the specific function it was entrusted to do.

Over the decades, the public sector and its endless layers of bureaucracies and agencies were set up essentially to siphon money from the government coffers in a legalised way.

To pay someone at an inflated price, there must first be programmes and projects, never mind these programmes and projects are phoney, and never intended to serve a specific purpose or to perform a specific function.

That is why we have projects that are half-completed, equipment brought but not used, or costs that are more than 100 percent inflated.

Do you know why? Because no one really was waiting to use these so-called services provided by the government. So it does not matter whether the project is completed, completed properly or allocations were used inefficiently.

By setting up a FAC or whatever, to me, is not going to solve the problem. We must first get the fundamentals right.

Indeed, the FAC will end up just like the Audit Department; after all, the auditor-general is a constitutional appointment, what independence and power do we need further?

It is the whole public sector structure that needs a complete downsizing and overhaul, which Pemandu and Pemudah should rightly be doing. Instead, they have created even more positions, consultants and created even more agencies to look into imaginary or meaningless targets, KPIs (key performance indicators), and national key result areas (NKRAs), etc.

For example, why do we need Pemandu chief Idris Jala to tell the police that the street crime is too high? By the time Idris Jala knows about it, I guess the whole country too knows about it.

If the police need to be told to do something, they should be kicked in the butt a long time ago.

Anonymous_29dd: Tony Pua seems to be ignorant on the inner working mechanism of the Umno government.

This habit of systematic mismanagement is something handed down from higher officials to low-level civil servants in all government agencies. It's the basis of its existence.

Both ends of the hierarchy keep a closed eye on each other's endeavours, robbing public funds to the last drop. In return, they keep Umno in power.

This is how they think: "I scratch your back, you scratch mine. It's my land, my country and my government. I'll take anything which I feel is rightfully mine as I'm the master of this land and the country owes me a living.

"Anyway, it doesn't matter as my boss, my political leader and even my beloved prime minister does it. All the ‘kafir' immigrants who do not like this can go to hell. God is on my side, always."

David Dass: We go through this again and again. It is astonishing how we allow so much money to be lost through incompetence, recklessness, indifference and dishonesty.

We are not Zimbabwe or Sudan. We are supposed to be well on the way to advanced nation status. How can we tolerate this?

The men and women from the Audit Department have worked hard to discover these misdeeds. Are we going to let the culprits go with only a rap on their knuckles?

Consider the effect of their actions on the people of Malaysia - lame horses , hundreds of computers meant for schools in Sabah rotting away , army installations falling apart , roads that cannot be used , e-coli in school water , food stored in toilets , a baggage system that is not used, farmers incentives not paid - all involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

Where is our collective rage?

Then there are those who want one million people to demonstrate because of non-existent threats of Christians trying to convert Muslims. Why are they silent now?

 

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