Dr M wants second audit from private sector for govt agencies

 

PARLIAMENT | Putrajaya should engage the services of the independent private sector to conduct a second audit on government agencies, on top of the government's internal audit, said Dr Mahathir Mohamad (Pejuang-Langkawi).

“An audit from the government is not enough. Sometimes we need to get a private auditor to do a second audit on the accounts kept by government agencies.

“It is not that we want to give them a contract opportunity, but between losing a lot of money and spending some of it to save the money, I think we should choose to save the money through spending some to get experts who can ensure that everything is being handled smoothly,” the former prime minister said in the Dewan Rakyat today while debating the 12th Malaysian Plan (12MP).

This comes after the National Audit Report 2019 Series 2 was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.

Auditor-General Nik Azman Nik Abdul Majid had said 17 performance audits of RM90.635 billion were carried out for the report while 62 recommendations have been submitted to enable corrective actions and improvements to be taken.

Previous independent audits of government agencies include the PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) review on Lembaga Tabung Haji (TH) in 2018, which revealed that TH had a deficit of RM4.1 billion as of end-2017.

While former TH chairperson Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim had disputed this figure at the time, saying that it should have a surplus of RM373 million, the PwC financial position review had an explanation for this discrepancy.

According to PwC, there was RM4.258 billion in impairment losses in equities, which TH had previously hidden through creative accounting. - Mkini