More make reports against civil servants – MACC

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KOTA KINABALU: There is a trend of increasing number of witnesses coming forward to report corruption involving civil servants, according to Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Sabah director Haji Jalil Haji Jaafar.

“This is due to improving awareness among the public, so more and more people are coming to us to make a report,” he said to the media when asked about the high number of government officers investigated and arrested for graft in the country.

Jalil who was met after a Round Table Discussion with the Sabah Customs Department here yesterday, however, did not reveal the number of government officers arrested in Sabah.

Statistics from the MACC official website showed that 282 or 42 per cent of the 701 people arrested for corruption last year were from the public sector.

Majority of them or 220 were low rank personnel while 62 were officers from management and professional category.

In January this year alone, 17 government servants were arrested, representing about 33 per cent of the total of 51 suspects hauled in as MACC continued to intensify operations against corruption nationwide.

Meanwhile, State Customs director Datuk Dr Janathan Kandok said the department was confident of achieving the revenue collection to be set by the Federal Government.

“We have not received any specific figure from the headquarters for this year but we are looking at maintaining our performance and meeting whatever target that will be given to us. Of course, we would like to record an increase, maybe around 10 per cent compared to last year,” he said.

Janathan said the official 2012 revenue collection for Sabah Customs Department would be announced soon.

Last year, the Malaysian Customs Department reported an increase of 6.5 per cent in its national collection, declaring a record breaking revenue of RM32.318 billion.

The Round Table Discussion was officiated by Federal Secretary to Sabah Datuk Abu Bakar Hassan.

The discussion was aimed at improving understanding and collaboration between the two agencies in combating corruption.