The BN govt has gone to the dogs and the Auditor's report confirms it

A lot can be said about the recently released Auditor-General's Report which was conveniently revealed 17 days after Prime Minister Najib Razak’s 'feel-good' Budget 2012.

The delay caused many to think that it was held back on purpose. The audit report has always been released before the presentation of the government's Budget, so that lawmakers and the country have a sense of how the past year's allocations were spent. Yet this year it only saw the light of day after the Pakatan Rakyat led by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim started questioning its glaring absence in Parliament.

But aside from the customary list of financial mismanagement that is so prevalent in every audit report, a few questions stare us unblinkingly. For all the audit reports released todate, how much effort has really been made to ratify the problems stated? Simply saying that the nation is better off this year than the last year does not constitute effort.

Without follow-through action, the Auditor-General's report stands at risk of losing its credibility and becoming another exercise to mask the real problems in government agencies and ministries in Malaysia.

Complacency and death of common sense

Complacency is prevalent in all the ministries and agencies chastised by the AG's report. Yet, little real action is taken against civil servants who simply flunk at doing a good job. The audit report also proves the death of common sense in the civil service. It is not merely the misappropriation of funds that is the problem but the whole system and structure of government that is broken. Civil servants and the stewards of public funds have simply lost their capacity to think rationally and responsibly.

Take for example the Marine Park Department that took delivery of two marine boats. All looks well until the auditors paid a visit. A clear case of idiots running the outfit is amplified when the boats were received and accepted despite having faulty emergency exits. The doors were not just faulty, they were unusable as 'emergency exits'. They were screwed tight with screws from the outside! Who in their right minds would have allowed such errors to pass inspection? Yet, this was the case. The officer who inspected and approved the delivery of the boats should be sacked or at the very least downgrdaded with heavy reprimand for being so remiss in his duty.

Wastage and passing the buck

Another example of idiots running a ministry can be seen in the Ministry of Education project to supply clean drinking water to rural schools. Rural here is not Sabah or Sarawak but rather in the states of Johor, Terengganu, Kelantan, Perak, Selangor, Pahang, Kedah, Melaka and Negeri Sembilan involving a total of 237 schools. Several of these projects were completed but the filters and pumps never got switched on because the promised electricity lines to the schools were not completed on time.

In fact, the auditors found that the power cables from the water filters and pumps ended nowhere. There was no power outlet to plug the system into. When asked how come, Tenaga Nasional was faulted for not being able to finish their school electrification project as quickly as the water pump project. Mind you, the clean water project cost RM73.5 million, yet bungling by the ministry deprived thousands of school children the basic access to clean drinking water.Gauge for yourselves what level of level of priority the Education ministry and Tenaga places on our nation’s children that even a project like this can be mismanaged.

Government has gone to the dogs

These two cases are just a drop in the ocean when compared with the other examples of gross mismanagement highlighted in the Auditor-General's Report for 2010. There is clearly no sense of responsibility among the ministries and agencies tasked with managing public funds and national resources.

It is high time, Malaysians demand that slipshod ministries and agencies get their act together and deliver more than just sub-standard services to the citizens of Malaysia. Enough is enough, excuses are mere smokescreens to the real reasons behind all the faults.

The system is broken, and government has gone to the dogs. Corruption reigns and making money from the system is priority number one - not fulfilling one's duty or executing the task set.

Reforms are badly needed and the government must revamp the way it manages national assets, or else Malaysia will continue to be handicapped by corrupt, irresponsible and incompetent staff who have lost their way in Malaysia's already unnecessarily bloated civil service.

Malaysia Chronicle