Wednesday, 8th September 2010
About RM 700,000 Allocated For Santubong Amenities cant Be Traced
Since year 2008, about RM 7000K in government project funds for Santubong have disappeared. This was revealed by Santubong MP Datuk Wan Junaidi Tunku Jaafar.
The project had never been implemented and according to him nobody could tell him where the funds had gone to.
"Where did the monies go? I cannot answer because I don't know. When I met with the authorities in Kuala Lumpur, they too could not tell me what happened to the monies." He told reporters when breaking of fast with communitiy leaders from his constituency last Sunday.
Diversion of funds is rampant in Sarawak, and Wan Junaidi was not the first MP that claimed the monies meant for his constituency diverted to somewhere else. On 3rd October 2009 I wrote about the diversion of allocation to other constituency in BUKITTUNGGAL.
Wan Junaidi who is Dewan Rakyat Speaker said he could not keep silent because the funds were supposed to have gone towards the implementation of “critical” projects like basic amenities and sanitary facilities for his constutuents.
Among others, he said he had approved funds for toilets at eight community halls at RM 20,000 each since 2008 but when he visited the halls recently, the jobs were not done.
Another uncompleted project was the provision of gravity-feed water supply to an Iban longhouse and settlement in Sungai Limo near Lundu, he said, adding that RM 150,000 was approved for the project to benefit about 200 people.
“What we want to know is why the money is no longer available when the projects were not implemented? We have discussed these projects so many times at state level because it is controlled by the State Development Office. So I had to go to KL last week to look for new funds because this concerned critical projects for the people,” He said.
Junaidi said project implementation was beyond the control of the elected representatives as the government agencies would take over the implementation part. However he said the public did not know this and they would blame their elected representatives instead.
When asked if he would lodge a report with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), Junaidi said he would prefer to settle the matter with the relevant departments as a corruption report was only necessary if it was an obvious criminal case.
He said many factors could be attributed to the missing funds and would be wise to check thoroughly first.
“It is just not my style to quickly lodge a report with MACC. You need to go to the ground first because it could be due to several factors like maybe it’s the contractor fault or funds were channeled to another priority projects,” he added.
Taken From the Stars Sarawak Edition dated Tuesday, 7th September 2010
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