I refer to the Malaysiakini report Auditor-General's report: ACA to probe allegations .
Like other taxpayers who will be promptly penalised if they pay their income tax late, I am seething with anger after reading the Auditor-General's 2006 Report on the wanton wastage of public funds for government procurement.
If the Inland Revenue Department and other government agencies can fine the public for delays in paying their taxes and other assessments due, I don't see why those top guns who abuse their power by wasting public funds should go scot-free.
The auditor-general's reports have highlighted government weaknesses in procurement and expenses year in and year out but surprisingly, it is only for academic purposes as no action was taken by the government to rectify these mistakes. Instead, it has become worse.
Don't tell me the top government servants are so incompetent that they do not know the market rate of goods supplied to their departments and allow vendors to cheat them blind with inflated prices.
Or is there more than meet the eye in that procurement officers at the highest level of government ministries colluded with their 'favourite' vendors to mark up the prices with the difference being shared between them?
Our civil service must move with the times. Surely after 50 years of independence and a knowledge-based workforce, our civil service should have the morals and honesty not to spend government funds in such a wasteful way. Or are they imitating their political masters who seem to be experts in sucking up public funds for their own selfish interests?
As usual the prime minister and his cabinet will make a big hue and cry about this matter and will asked the ministries' top officials to look into this matter 'with urgency'. But the records shows that all this concern is hogwash. Besides, Malaysians seem to have short memories and after a while, it's business as usual.
In Japan, prime minster Shinto Abe resigned after less than a year in office due to scandals involving his ministers. In the Philippines, a former president was sentence to life imprisonment due to his abuse of power and corruption while in office. Even in communist China, a banker was executed for stealing his bank's funds while a senior party member and his underlings were executed after being found guilty of murder.
While we don't expect our country execute those found guilty of corruption, the very least the authorities could do is to bring them to book. Public funds are meant for our citizens to have a higher standard of living and to help the poor and the downtrodden - not to be hijacked by those who have no shame.
Vision 2020 is just 13 years away but instead of progressing towards being a well-developed country with a first-class infrastructure and a first-class civil service, we seem to be heading in the opposite direction - towards being a failed state.
