Speak up: Get back our money!

http://www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=31596

THE disclosures made at the hearing at Selangor State Assembly’s Select Committee on Competency, Accountability and Transparency are telling indeed. The testimonies and confessions that state-owned companies were cash cows for a select few must raise more than a few eyebrows. What transpired at a public hearing over the past four days suggests that wives of senior politicians paid no heed to laws, rules, regulations and procedures and instead chose to use these companies as their personal and private banks.

Holidays, air-tickets, souvenirs, gifts and other luxuries were showered on members of Balkis – the Association of Wives of State Elected Representatives in Selangor. In some instances, such privileges were demanded.

The money came from the state – state-owned companies to be precise and to an extent, companies owned by the people of Selangor.

Is the payment for four sets of sports attire justified? These are some of the questions that run through the minds of the man-in-the-street when he discovers that while some of his kinsmen don’t have a roof over their heads, there are people who are gallivanting around the world in the name of welfare and at the expense of the rakyat.

In view of what has already been discovered, the inevitable question is: What happens next?

While the state government may have succeeded in exposing the excesses of its predecessors, let’s not forget that millions of ringgit of people’s money was used to pay the expenses of a few, in the process throwing out all norms of common decency.

The state should make every effort to recoup whatever money that was misused. The law should be used to ensure that those who benefited by abusing state funds pay back every sen. That will be the icing on the cake for the rakyat whose hard-earned money was used in this series of (mis)adventures by a select few.