Independent body needed to monitor politicians' NGO - Mustapha

KUALA LUMPUR: An independent body needs to be established to monitor any politician who sets up a non-governmental organisation (NGO) for charitable purposes.

Member of the Advisory Panel of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Foundation (YARM), Datuk Mustapha Ahmad Merican, said they need to avoid the perception that it is moving on personal interests and allocations that do not reach the target group.

"In the context of our country, there must be another body although we know the MACC is working hard to eradicate corruption.

“We must also have observers to those who carry out this kind of task and trust so that there is monitoring to ensure the charitable work can be carried out effectively,” he said.

"Otherwise, who wants to monitor whom? He has power but no one is watching, so he is free to do anything. I am not criticising but I suggest that there is a body that can monitor.

“When there is monitoring, any weakness can be improved, instead of finding people's faults.

"The people who are arrested are sometimes trapped, we have to see that sometimes they are persecuted, so who wants to defend those who are persecuted," he said when contacted by Astro AWANI on Thursday.

Mustapha explained the most important thing is not to take some of the money allocated to help the people by highlighting their own luxury alone.

Meanwhile, Member of Parliament for Segambut, Hannah Yeoh, said the establishment of NGOs by politicians was due to the condition that allocations from the Implementation Coordination Unit (ICU) were only made to the bodies in each program organised.

She said the move did not necessarily symbolise the politician being interested in doing charity work.

"I actually do not like to mix political work with NGO charity work but what I can see, among the causes of the problem here is the allocation of MPs channelled by the ICU in the Prime Minister's Department stipulates that allocation can only be paid to NGOs or residents' associations and cannot be paid through the Member of Parliament's service centre.

"So, when there is a program organised by MPs and have to pay for food or other expenses, they can only pay through NGO channels.

“I hope this can be improved by ICU so that all spending can be done transparently without using an NGO platform which can lead to abuse of power or abuse of allocation," she added.

According to the official website of the ICU, the projects allowed include public or basic infrastructure, social programs as well as charitable contributions that have public interest.