AG's Report: We reduced repeat offences, says Chief Secretary

The number of repeat offences in terms of the various mismanagement, wastage and abuses found in the Auditor-General’s (AG) reports has shown a downward trend since 2011, according to the chief secretary to the government.

“The important thing for me is that the repeat offences have shown a reducing trend," said Tan Sri Ali Hamsa today.

"(But) We need to reduce these even further. If it goes up then that is worrying,” Ali told a town hall session held with Ministry director-generals together with the media on the AG’s report.

Ali admitted that there sometimes seem to be similar offences being repeated despite punitive actions being taken in prior reports.

“That’s why we are finding ways to avoid in future the same cases, such as transforming each ministry individually," he said.

He lamented that the media has a tendency to focus on negative stories but there were many successes and best practices that the government has achieved that went unreported.

Ali also said that in the Series 2 AG's report released on Monday, the Education Ministry were among one of the best in terms of improvement.

“They are the biggest ministry, but they have improved tremendously. There is no question about that. Look, there were no questions by the media targeted at the ministry today,” he said.

Ali also said that he hoped to hold more open dialogues with media and the public through townhall programmes such as the one held today, where Ministry officials were questioned by the media.

Earlier, while briefing the media about the actions taken in the first series of the Auditor-General (AG) Report 2013 released on April 7, Ali said that no elements of corruption was found.

He added that as of June 13, 2014, no action was required by the Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) over the 55 cases where punitive reprimands were issued to the officers found guilty.

There were also 41 reprimands were found to be baseless in terms of disciplinary action, as it did not involve misconduct, but were a result of weaknesses in procedure and rules.

Six other reprimands are still being probed by the investigating committee, while disciplinary action has been recommended for the remaining eight reprimands involving 26 civil officers.