Doubts over veracity of Auditor-General’s Reports
Ravinder SinghPublished: Jan 24, 2015 1:00 PM | Updated: Jan 24, 2015 1:04 PM
Clarifying RTM’s
purchase of wall clocks
for RM3,810 apiece as reported in the Auditor-General’s Report, Public Accounts Committee chairperson Nur Jazlan Mohamed said the picture given by the Audit Report was not correct. He was speaking at the public forum ‘Government Audit - Formality or Accountability?’ in Penang yesterday.
Clarifying RTM’s purchase of wall clocks for RM3,810 apiece as reported in the Auditor-General’s Report, Public Accounts Committee chairperson Nur Jazlan Mohamed said the picture given by the Audit Report was not correct. He was speaking at the public forum ‘Government Audit - Formality or Accountability?’ in Penang yesterday.
He stated that the Auditor-General’s Report had “lumped” all the clocks into one and come up with the figure of RM3,810 each, whereas the precision atomic clocks cost more than normal clocks. This explanation casts the Audit Reports in a bad light. It shows that the auditors do not pay attention to detail. Why did the audit report do this and give a wrong picture to the public?
The auditor-general should clarify this. How many of the clocks purchased were precision atomic clocks and how much did each cost? What is the open market price of such clocks? How many of the clocks were normal wall clocks and how much was paid for each? Such details are necessary for anyone reading the reports to get a true picture of the use/abuse of public money.
On another complaint, that the Mara College in Balik Pulau had purchased two laptops for over RM80,000, Nur Jazlan had an explanation, too. He said, having used the money given for the budgeted expenses, there might have been some left over. So, to show in the accounts that the full sum of money given to the college had been utilised, the left-over money might have been added to the actual expenditure items, thus showing that more was paid for them.
This again raises questions about the quality of the Auditor General’s Reports. Did the college actually purchase the two laptops and were they seen by the auditors? Was the payment made for them verified? If they were not actually purchased, how did this appear in the accounts?
Given that Nur Jazlan’s explanation could be correct, that there might not have been actual payment of RM80,000 for the two laptops, then why is such a payment shown in the accounts of the college? Is there nothing wrong with producing false accounts?
If the figure only appears in the accounts to give a false picture that the college had utilised all the money given to it for the year, then where did the left-over money actually go as it was not returned to the treasury? And is giving of such false pictures accepted as a proper accounting procedure?
The auditor-general must explain these two purchases as Nur Jazlan’s clarification has cast doubts on the veracity of his reports on them, and on the reports in general.
PAC chief bombarded with queries on corruption
He stated that the Auditor-General’s Report had “lumped” all the clocks into one and come up with the figure of RM3,810 each, whereas the precision atomic clocks cost more than normal clocks. This explanation casts the Audit Reports in a bad light. It shows that the auditors do not pay attention to detail. Why did the audit report do this and give a wrong picture to the public?
The auditor-general should clarify this. How many of the clocks purchased were precision atomic clocks and how much did each cost? What is the open market price of such clocks? How many of the clocks were normal wall clocks and how much was paid for each? Such details are necessary for anyone reading the reports to get a true picture of the use/abuse of public money.
On another complaint, that the Mara College in Balik Pulau had purchased two laptops for over RM80,000, Nur Jazlan had an explanation, too. He said, having used the money given for the budgeted expenses, there might have been some left over. So, to show in the accounts that the full sum of money given to the college had been utilised, the left-over money might have been added to the actual expenditure items, thus showing that more was paid for them.
This again raises questions about the quality of the Auditor General’s Reports. Did the college actually purchase the two laptops and were they seen by the auditors? Was the payment made for them verified? If they were not actually purchased, how did this appear in the accounts?
Given that Nur Jazlan’s explanation could be correct, that there might not have been actual payment of RM80,000 for the two laptops, then why is such a payment shown in the accounts of the college? Is there nothing wrong with producing false accounts?
If the figure only appears in the accounts to give a false picture that the college had utilised all the money given to it for the year, then where did the left-over money actually go as it was not returned to the treasury? And is giving of such false pictures accepted as a proper accounting procedure?
The auditor-general must explain these two purchases as Nur Jazlan’s clarification has cast doubts on the veracity of his reports on them, and on the reports in general.
PAC chief bombarded with queries on corruption
View Comments0