The heads of various governmental agencies and departments sweated under the glare of media questioning as they were grilled over the details of the Auditor General’s Report 2013, the second series of which was tabled in Parliament on Monday.
During the first-ever media briefing on the findings of the report held yesterday and organized by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Paul Low and coordinated by Pemandu and the Chief Secretary’s office, many heads of departments were either dismissive about, unable or unwilling to give straight answers about the discrepancies in their operations.
The Malaysian Insider‘s Anisah Shukry reports that Communications and Multimedia Ministry director-general Datuk Seri Abdul Rahim Mohamed Radzi was unable to answer queries pertaining to Radio Televisyen Malaysia’s (RTM) media agreement with private satellite media giant Astro, nor could he explain how RTM could buy programmes from suppliers without a formal contract.
Despite the Auditor General’s Report stating that Felda had broken up a RM1.85 million procurement contract for Settler’s Day last year to avoid having to conduct an open tender for it, Felda director-general Faizoull Ahmad dismissed the matter as being “nothing big”.
“On Settler’s Day, that was held in Jengka, at that time it was the year of Innovation. So we had decided to give the contract to one contractor because of the volume of people attending the programme is more than 40,000 people,” he said.
“At that time, the prime minister would like to have something different because Felda has already transformed,” he said.
At that point he was reprimanded by R Nadeswaran, senior editor of The Sun, who said he was avoiding the question.
The event, broadcast live over RTM, was already marred by Low asked at the outset that non-media and non-civil servant personnel to leave the auditorium, as it was a “closed-door event”. This resulted in opposition MPs Raja Kamarul Shahrin Bahrin of Kuala Terengganu and Sim Tze Tzin of Bayan Baru having to vacate their seats and exit the premises.
Later, however, Cynthia Gabriel, director of the NGO Centre to Combat Cronyism and Corruption – not a member of the media and not a civil servant – managed to enter the auditorium and even took the microphone to ask the heads of the ministries and agencies to work with the civil society to tackle corruption.
Although she was allowed to speak, her question was however left unanswered, and the emcee moved on to ask for more questions from the media.
The event was hailed as “very significant” by Low, who said it was time for the government to interact more with the media.
“Today’s media forum is not only the first of its kind, but an event which will continue into the future. This is the reason why we have all the government transformation programmes and other transformation initiatives.
“It isn’t just KPI (Key Performance Index) alone but there must be real change in substance and not just form,” Low said in his opening speech, after booting out the opposition MPs from the hall.
Photo: Nazir Sufari / The Malaysian Insider
