PAC: Water scandal could have been addressed earlier
Published on: Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Kota Kinabalu: The water graft scandal that rocked the State last year could have been addressed much earlier had previous issues raised by the Auditor-General been attended to sooner.Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Malaysia Chairman Datuk Seri Hasan Arifin said the report, published annually, should have triggered the alarm if only government department heads were more attentive to details."I do agree that this could have been stopped sooner. But PAC is not an investigating department.
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This thing falls under the jurisdiction of enforcement bodies such as the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), the police and other relevant authorities," he said during a press conference here, Monday.PAC, he explained, would act on the reports produced by the Auditor-General and help solve some of the issues but definitely not authorised to make arrests.During the same press conference, Special Tasks Minister Datuk Teo Chee Kang opined that there is a need to empower PAC to become sort of a watchdog to monitor departments and agencies on their management of public funds.He said some people would accuse that PAC is weak just because they do not understand the functions of PAC.
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"They act upon reports from the Auditor-General and I'm not sure whether it's accurate to say that PAC is weak in this sense because in the few incidents that had come to public in terms of misuse of power, accumulation of all these corrupted wealth, it could have been prompted by reports of PAC as well. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
Daily Express Malaysia
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The water scandal which disgraced the State Water Department last year saw the department's two most senior officials accused of accumulating millions of ringgit worth of cash and other valuables over a span of a few years through shrewd manipulation of the department's contracting system.
