Ramon: AG’s Report risks being a broken record
Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam
I wish to congratulate Transparency-International (TI-M) president Datuk Akhbar Satar and Secretary Datuk Dr KM Loi for TI-M’s very constructive comments on the Auditor General’s Report and its appeal to the Prime Minister to take tougher action against those who have abused Public Trust and Public Funds.
The Auditor General Tan Sri Ambrin Buang and his gallant team deserve full praise for the excellent AG’s Report once again.
However, the Rakyat would be sad to note that all the AG’s laudable efforts to highlight Government administrative and financial weaknesses seem to be falling on deaf ears. There is still a strong recurrence of all these wasteful and corrupt practices in the public sector.
Who knows how bad it is in the private sector and indeed in the whole economy.
Hence I have the following proposals for Government and the AG to consider and adopt.
1. Can there be an AG’s Report Card that grades and ranks Ministries, departments and government-linked companies (GLC)’s according to their compliance with regulations and competencies in Public Administration? The Report Card could be put on the Websites for all to see and judge. This will help the Government to impose higher standards.
2. Can the Government give some undertaking that it will seriously consider the many sound proposals made by TI-M to improve the standards of governance in our country and give an account as to what extent it has followed the AG’s advice? The Public Accounts Committee could institute such a periodic survey.
3. I would urge the Government to also form and lead a People’s Movement against Bad Governance and Corruption, to bring about more efficiency and savings to help the poor and to help alleviate inflation through reducing corruption and wastage of public funds.
Unless Government takes the AG’s Report more seriously and introduces more punitive action against errant staff, we will continue to hear a broken record called the Auditor General’s Continuing Woes.
This can be painful to hear and would certainly erode public confidence please.
