KUALA LUMPUR: It is wrong for academicians running the accounting faculties of local universities to oppose the proposal to amend the Accountants Act 1967, which is aimed at strengthening the accounting profession, Parliamentary Public Accounts Commiteee chairman Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed said yesterday.
Nur Jazlan, who was a council member of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) from 2000-2011, said while he could understand the culture in universities to protect their interests, they should also realise that the whole world was globalising and in the accounting profession like in other fields, dynamic changes were taking place.
He said throughout the 11 years he was an MIA council member, the council had tried to encourage more Bumiputera accounting graduates to take up qualifications certified by the world accounting bodies in order to solve the issue of world recognition.
Nur Jazlan, who was elected as a council member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) at its recent meeting in London, was responding to a series of recent newspaper articles where some academicians criticised the proposed move to amend the Act, alleging, among other things, that it would downgrade the status of local university accounting graduates.
MIA, the regulatory body for the accounting professsion, had clarified that the proposed amendment to the Act, which is still in the discussion stage, was aimed at strengthening the profession and to enable more accountancy graduates to take up internationally-recognised qualifications through various upskilling initiatives.
Nur Jazlan said if the universities themselves could undertake the upskilling efforts on their own, it would be ‘well and good’ but if they could not, the better way was for them to encourage their students to take up these global qualifications.
He said as the whole world was globalising, they should teach their students to open up. “They should face the world, instead of trying to protect them internally,” he added.
He described the resistance to the proposed amendment among some academicians as “trying to hide their own weaknesses” while if such weaknesses either in the system or curriculum existed, efforts should be made to overcome them.
Nur Jazlan said the bottom line for academicians was to enchance the marketability of their graduates and this was even more so for accountancy, which is one of the most open professions in the country that has allowed even foreign accountants to operate for the past decades. — Bernama