KUALA LUMPUR: The Accountant General’s Department of Malaysia has been urged to enhance enforcement activities and improve and strengthen its internal control system to further improve the management of unclaimed monies.
According to the third series of the Auditor-General’s Report 2013, the selection criteria for inspection cases of unclaimed monies should focus on risky companies and firms.
“In the Audit’s opinion, the objective of the enforcement of the Unclaimed Monies Act 1965 was not achieved as the scope of the Trust and Security Management Division (TSMD) does not cover the detection of companies that do not present the unclaimed monies,” said the report.
The Accountant-General of Malaysia has been appointed as the Registrar of Unclaimed Monies under the Unclaimed Monies Act 1965.
The Registrar’s role is undertaken by the TSMD of the Accountant General’s Department, and hence TSMD is responsible for ensuring effective and systematic enforcement of the Unclaimed Monies Act 1965.
The report said the TSMD must prepare a checklist as the Standard Operating Procedures that should be complied by all officers during inspection of unclaimed monies.
Since the establishment of the unclaimed monies unit, TSMD had successfully increased the delivery of unclaimed monies of RM3.844 billion from 2005 to 2012.
Meanwhile, the report also stated the data of unclaimed monies that were exposed to alteration elements could attract the risk of diversion.
“Hence, improvement in uploading process of information on owners of unclaimed monies in the Unclaimed Monies Registration Form (UMA-3) into the Government Unclaimed Money Information System (G-UMIS) must be implemented,” the report said.
Among the implementation that has been proposed are that UMA-3 in the form of Microsoft Excel must be made in a format protected from any amendments as well as have control elements.
Among the weaknesses of the internal control system was that the unclaimed monies information in UMA-3 received from entities in softcopy form could be altered prior to being uploaded into the G-UMIS. — Bernama