9 April 2015
The Finance Ministry has been taken to task for not reporting back to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the progress of its recommendations to the various Government ministries.
Its chairman Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed said despite a Treasury Department order that corrective actions taken by the respective ministries be reported back to the PAC, an official report had not been forthcoming.
“The instruction is that they get back to us in a prompt manner on actions taken based on our recommendations, whether it is against errant officers or to improve processes.
“However, the feedback from the ministries to the Treasury has never been fed back to us. This is not good practice,” Nur Jazlan said after issuing a PAC report card on the government in Parliament, Thursday.
He said the lack of information to date from the Finance Ministry was “unacceptable”, as the people wanted answers on the recurring issues that crop up in the annual Auditor-General’s report.
The ministry instructs the A-G’s department to conduct the yearly government audits.
“We have intimated to them that we want a report on actions taken so far, because there are repeat offences outlined in the A-G’s report.
“The PAC represents the people, and they are tired of listening to same excuses every year,” he said.
Nur Jazlan was irked by the inaction over PAC’s recommendations on the klia2 and incinerator projects, which had resulted in the public labelling the committee as “toothless tigers”.
“We tabled those recommendations in November last year. It’s been six months, and still no action.
“PAC has been calling for the A-G to be allowed to carry out a comprehensive audit of klia2. Until today, it has not been acted upon.
“We also demanded that action be taken against the officials and experts responsible for the incinerator project failure, but nothing has been done.”
In the report card, PAC listed a total of 67 recommendations on 13 different projects it had made since November.
“Some of the recommendations have been met, some we were not satisfied with, while others have not been acted upon at all.
“The problem is that we don’t know the progress made by these ministries as we have not received an official report from the Finance Ministry,” he repeated.
Original Source: www.thestar.com.my
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