KUALA LUMPUR – The independence of a third-party auditor tasked with looking into the embattled Human Resources Development Corporation (HRD Corp) will be disputed if it is made to report to the Human Resources Ministry, cautioned a former HRD Corp senior leader.
HRD Corp’s former chief operations officer Datuk Ariff Farhan Doss, who was sacked from the government-linked entity in May, said the auditor should instead answer to the National Audit Department and Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
“The Human Resources Ministry secretary-general (Datuk Seri Khairul Dzaimee Daud) is a HRD Corp board member, and therefore has vested interests, including the board chairman (Datuk Abu Huraira Abu Yazid),” Ariff told Scoop.
“Ideally, the payment to this independent auditor should not come from HRD Corp or the ministry… The last person (the auditor) should listen to or be led by is the current ministry representative who sits on the HRD Corp board.”
The audit is expected to be carried out on HRD Corp’s operations from 2019 to 2023.
Khairul will also chair a special task force formed by the ministry to facilitate ongoing investigations, including probes by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), as well as to study the Auditor-General (A-G) and PAC reports on discrepancies in HRD Corp.
While Ariff said he welcomes an audit on the corporation “without any interference from its senior management or board members”, he also questioned the rationale behind the decision announced by Human Resources Minister Steven Sim.
“What is being put across to the public now is that the A-G and PAC reports are found wanting and therefore lacking in credibility, which warrants the ministry bringing in a third party.
“This is after (Sim) in Parliament stated that reforms (for HRD Corp) were already in place, even before the PAC and A-G reports were made public, and he goes on to commend HRD Corp for a job well done.”
Ariff’s termination is said to have been motivated by, among others, his move to speak out against HRD Corp to the PAC, the National Audit Department and the MACC.
Yesterday, the nation’s top graft busters said its probe into HRD Corp would be focused on elements of alleged corruption, power abuse and funds misappropriation.
The criminal investigation follows the anti-graft agency’s visit to the corporation’s office in Jalan Beringin here to obtain documents related to its probe on issues highlighted in the A-G report.
The audit report recommended that the Human Resources Ministry take appropriate action against HRD Corp’s management by referring them to enforcement agencies.
The audit report also highlighted several concerns, including how the corporation had amended its key performance indicator goals for 2020-2023 without the approval of its board of directors.
The actions and decisions by HRD Corp’s management, the audit report said, did not comply with procedures and failed to protect the interests necessary to achieve the corporation’s objectives.
Similarly, PAC’s three-volume report on the corporation found, among others, that HRD Corp’s management practised poor governance while undertaking suspicious procurement methods for real estate, causing the corporation to suffer losses. – July 10, 2024