{"id":11259,"date":"2014-12-15T16:37:45","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T08:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/?p=11259"},"modified":"2014-12-15T16:37:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T08:37:45","slug":"once-again-liow-sidesteps-pacs-recommendation-to-allow-the-ag-to-audit-klia-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/once-again-liow-sidesteps-pacs-recommendation-to-allow-the-ag-to-audit-klia-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Once again, Liow sidesteps PAC’s recommendation to allow the AG to audit KLIA 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tony Pua, MP for Petaling Jaya Utara<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"02.02.2012-PC<\/a>The Transport Minister, Liow Tiong Lai heavily criticised for setting up an \u201cindependent audit committee\u201d with strictly limited scope to study only the \u201csinking surfaces\u201d of the KLIA2 airport, which avoided any scrutiny over the other issues raised by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) which caused the inflated RM4 billion budget and repeatedly extended deadlines.<\/p>\n

These included the decisions to locate KLIA 2 at KLIA West, a site which has been documented by engineers as costly and ill-suited for airport construction; and the choice of a satellite-type terminal instead of a finger pier terminal as proposed by the airport consultants.<\/p>\n

In response, the Minister now claims that the PAC misunderstood the setting up of the committee. He said that the \u201cindependent audit committee\u201d was being set up even before the PAC report.<\/p>\n

With regards to the issues raised by the PAC, Liow said Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) who was involved in the airport\u2019s construction was ordered by the ministry to answer PAC\u2019s queries. \u201cThey (MAHB) need to cooperate with PAC because this involves public\u2019s interest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Despite giving the excuse for the \u201cindependent audit committee\u201d being restricted in scope, the Minister has once again sidestepped the first and key recommendation from the PAC \u2013 that is to allow the Auditor-General to audit MAHB over the scandal.<\/p>\n

The PAC has already heard and queried the officials from the Ministry of Transport and MAHB extensively before concluding the PAC report with the relevant recommendations. Hence, there is not much more point for the MAHB to just \u201cto cooperate with PAC\u201d again.<\/p>\n

The PAC has already produced the damning report which found many elements of gross mismanagement, and that\u2019s why we had recommended for the Auditor-General to audit the project. However, the Government must provide the necessary instruction to the Auditor-General to do so.<\/p>\n

The question hence for Liow, is whether he will abide by the PAC recommendation to prove that MAHB and his Ministry has nothing to hide. Or will he continue to sidestep the issue, praying that the issue will just go away quietly in order to protect the vested interest parties of those involved in the RM 4 billion scandal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tony Pua, MP for Petaling Jaya Utara The Transport Minister, Liow Tiong Lai heavily criticised for setting up an \u201cindependent audit committee\u201d with strictly limited scope to study only the \u201csinking surfaces\u201d of the KLIA2 airport, which avoided any scrutiny over the other issues raised by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) which caused the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11275,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11259\/revisions\/11275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}