Audit finds Registrar of Societies failing in duties

AUDIT REPORT In contrast with the crackdown on DAP by the Registrar of Societies' (ROS), the Auditor-General's Report 2012 has found that enforcement by the ROS lacking.
                    
Among others, a check on its files kept in its Putrajaya, Penang, Johor and Pahang has shown that 90 societies have not submitted any report to the ROS, but no notice was issued against them.

This includes files of 17 of the 31 political parties included in the Putrajaya audit, and that of 150 non-political organisations from the three states.

The report notes that under Section 14 of the Societies Act 1966, organisations registered under the ROS must file a report with the regulator within 60 days of its annual general meeting (AGM), or within 60 days of the end of the calendar year if no AGM is held.

The registrar is supposed to order the errant groups to provide him with the required information, failing which would result in the organisation's deregistration.

"In the auditor's opinion, monitoring on the submission of annual statements by organisations is unsatisfactory because of ROS's failure to monitor all registered organisations and take action in accordance to existing rules," the report said.

The ROS replied that starting from Jan 2012, it has issued reminders to registered organisations to submit their reports, and the eRoses come online since Jan 2013 to aid monitoring.
            
Of late, the ROS had ordered DAP to hold a re-election of its Central Executive Committee (CEC) members over alleged irregularities at its last party polls

The party has denied the allegations but held the reelection "under protest" on Sunday, claiming that the order was unjustified but it could not risk "arbitrary deregistration".

Among other issues raised in the auditor-general's report regarding ROS include:    

• The ROS has not given its decision for 15 out of 31 applications to form new political parties, some of which have been waiting since 2010. Of these, 12 were attributed to the ROS not receiving feedback from the Home Ministry's National Registration Affairs and Organisation Division, which is supposed to vet the applications.    

• The ROS had been slow in investigating complaints or gazetting deregistered organisations.

• The ROS has only six officers in its monitoring department of each state, and each officer monitors an average of 2,138 organisations.

The auditor-general rated the ROS' overall performance as "unsatisfactory".