KUALA LUMPUR – Human Resources Minister V. Sivakumar is expected to be summoned by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) today to assist with probes into the management and finances of the Human Resources Development Corporation (HRD Corp).
It is believed that a Finance Ministry representative on the HRD Corp board attended PAC proceedings yesterday.
On October 26, PAC chairman Datuk Mas Ermieyati Samsudin told a press conference in Parliament that both figures were summoned by the committee as their names were mentioned during previous proceedings.
Earlier that day, Scoop reported that Sivakumar would be summoned today. Also named in the report was Datuk Rosli Yaakub, the Finance Ministry’s representative on the HRD Corp board.
Rosli, the deputy secretary for governance and monitoring under the Finance Ministry’s government investment companies division, had raised the alarm over the introduction of a skills passport programme, which he said did not get board approval.
On April 10, Rosli wrote a six-page letter addressed to HRD Corp chairman Datuk R. Rajasekharan and chief executive Datuk Shahul Hameed Dawood, raising concerns that included the lack of transparency in the approval, the absence of board approval, and the weak finances of Neomindz Sdn Bhd, the company that was going to partner with HRD Corp in rolling out the project.
He also feared that the company was 50% owned by an Indian national and wondered if it was prudent to put sensitive local data in the hands of a foreign entity.
On October 23, a highly placed source told Scoop that the PAC is investigating various allegations of abuse of power and procedural wrongdoings within the institution that sits on an estimated RM2 billion, comprising employers’ contributions.
This came after PAC quizzed two senior office-bearers – Shahul and Human Resources Ministry Deputy Secretary-General (Policy and International) Datuk Amran Ahmad – over how the corporation has been running without a chairman or full board since April.
Scoop previously reported that a governance framework report, which is meant to prevent future mismanagement and misappropriation, had been removed from the corporation’s system and kept from the current board.
An audit on the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) – before it was renamed HRD Corp, as it is known today – was ordered by then-human resources minister M. Kulasegaran in 2018, but the report, according to Kulasegaran, is no longer accessible since his departure from the ministry in 2020.
The present leadership of HRD Corp has also been accused of misleading the board on its proposed Skills Passport initiative, where the Finance Ministry found discrepancies in a contract procurement valued at between RM53 million and RM159.47 million a year. – November 2, 2023