DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang today demanded a full accounting of the expenses involved in setting up the Parliament website

in response to a Parliament statement that about RM2.4 million had been spent on the website since it was launched six years ago.

He called on Parliament Speaker Mohamad Zahir Ismail to present a report to the public that proved Parliament did not squander "millions or tens of millions of ringgit to produce a most disgraceful website for six years".

Lim (photo) wanted the report to give a detailed account of the annual expenditures incurred by the website for the past six years and a "close scrutiny" of the cost-effectiveness of Parliament's efforts to go online.

He claimed that Parliament will become "a standing joke" and would "lose all credibility" if it refused to commission such a report, since it is itself responsible for ensuring government accountability for public expenditure.

Lim was adamant that the current Parliament website did not justify spending even RM100,000 and that the RM2.4 million figure quoted was still an "excessive expenditure" that bordered on "criminal negligence".

Lim criticised the "Jurassic" website for its lack of topical or interactive material, the "Bills" section that has been 'under construction' for six years, and the "Order of Business" and "Hansard" pages that regularly "hang up".

The worst culprit

He said that the website showed that Malaysia was "totally unready" to enter the information era and that e-government was being abused by government departments to waste resources and decrease accountability, with Parliament being "the worst culprit".

When malaysiakini visited the Bahasa Melayu-only Parliament website, the 'Bills' page was indeed found to be 'under construction' or " Dalam Pembinaan !" as the message on the page stated.

Interactive features, such as search engines, could not be detected on the website. However, the computer did not hang when browsing the "Order of Business" and "Hansard" pages.

Lim was responding to a Parliament statement issued today that only RM2.4 million was spent on buying computers and developing and maintaining the website, as opposed to the tens of millions that Lim alleged last Monday had been "squandered".

The statement, issued by public relations officer Ishak Momin, also dismissed Lim's claim that the website was "user-unfriendly" but did not provide reasons for saying so.