I pay dead people – welfare aid to ghosts in three states

Dead people were receiving welfare aid in Sabah, Kelantan and Negeri Sembilan. This is yet another finding in the 2012 Auditor-General’s Report, which highlighted spectacular failures by government departments when it was submitted to Parliament yesterday.

Among the other findings was that the police let 44 firearms go missing, which led DAP’s vice-chair Teresa Kok to link Malaysia’s wave of shootings to the missing arms.

There were other revelations of millions of ringgit of wastage and this includes the welfare aid to 145 dead people in three states.

Under standard operating procedures, officers assigned to a recipient have to make house visits if payment has not been collected for three months.
If a recipient is found to have moved or died, the name has to be removed from the list immediately.

But in Semporna and Sandakan in the Borneo state of Sabah, payments of between RM150 and RM450 in general welfare aid were still being made to 12 dead people, although their deaths had been recorded in the recipients’ list.

In Kelantan, there were 93 recipients who had died between 2005 and last year. Of the total, 41 had aid totalling RM110,700 banked directly into their accounts, of which RM65,691 had been withdrawn by their heirs.

For cash aid, the names of 52 dead recipients were still stated in the list of payment vouchers, although these remained uncollected for up to 26 months.

In Negeri Sembilan, 40 dead recipients – some dead since 2008 – from Seremban, Kuala Pilah and Port Dickson still got between RM100 and RM200 a month.

Of the total, RM45,350 was paid to 15 people who died between 2008 and 2011.

Payments were also made to 154 individuals on whom the department had no information on its database.

"The payment is questionable due to the legitimacy of the recipients," said the AG report.

It found that in Malacca 302 recipients aged 40 and below got welfare aid, although one of the state's welfare regulations outlined that applicants must be above 40.

"There was an approved application for a person aged 20 years old," the report stated, noting that such incidences happened due to approvals and strong recommendations from local representatives because the applicants really needed help.

In reply, Sabah welfare services department said money was still being sent to dead people because their families or the village heads had yet to report their deaths.

The Kota Baru and Pasir Mas welfare offices said they had taken immediate action to stop payment to the deceased since December last year after the AG confirmed the status of the dead people with the National Registration Department (NRD).

Both offices had also sent letters to the banks requesting that the balance of unused aid be returned to them.

They also pledged to remove the names of dead people immediately from their list and conduct periodic checks with the NRD.

The Negeri Sembilan welfare department said it has managed to recover some of the money from the heirs, while four have been asked to remit the money back in instalments.

However, two cases involving RM5,680 remained untraceable.