See urges State govt to appoint integrity officers into its ranks

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See Chee How

KUCHING: Batu Lintang assemblyman See Chee How has called upon the Chief Minister to initiate discussion with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency (MACC) and the Auditor-General’s (AG) Department to appoint a Certified Integrity Officer (CeIO) into the various departments and agencies in Sarawak government.

The Parti Kedilan Rakyat (PKR) Sarawak vice chairman said this would be in line with the attempt of the Chief Minister to uphold integrity, accountability, transparency and good governance in his administration.

“Such attempt should be lauded and welcomed by all Sarawakians, but the course of action and institutional changes must be set right, he said in a statement today when commenting on the Chief Minister’s announcement in his winding up speech delivered on Wednesday.

The Chief Minister announced to invite representatives from the AG’s office and the MACC to attend the state tender board meetings.

According to See, the Chief Minister’s endeavours to engage these two important watchdogs to inculcate and enhance the state administration’s governance is applauded.

“But the engagement of officers from the AG’s Department and the MACC should not be restricted to the attendance of the tender board meetings. Their involvement should encompass and include the overseeing of the process of planning, designing, value assessment, tendering, appointment of consultant and contractors, financing and the implementation of the state projects and the operations of the various departments and agencies,” he said.

He said, last August, he had urged the Chief Minister to consider the appointment and secondment of independent integrity officers from the MACC to serve in the respective boards and project management teams which oversees the planning and implementation of the state mega projects.

“A CeIO is a trained and accredited officer that plays an integral role within an organisation to inculcate integrity and ethical values.

“A CeIO is trained in integrity management, the required legal framework, compliance and monitoring system, foster zero tolerance towards fraud, corruption and abuse of power as well as the ability to develop integrity action plan.

“In fact, the country had set up the National Integrity and Good Governance Department (JITN) to spearhead integrity efforts at ministries and agencies in 2012 which saw 50 CeIOs with the MACC being seconded and appointed into the various ministries and agencies to oversee their various functions and operations in order to weed out corruption and abuse of power in the civil service.

“Unfortunately, those appointments and secondments were short-lived, under the previous federal administration. Their engagement were terminated before the last general election,” pointed out See.

During their short tenure, he said it was generally felt that these CeIOs were trained to identify corruption and abuse of power and they conducted investigations without bias and favour, and that by working independently in the various departments and agencies, these CeIOs had succeeded in creating the fear factor in those with corrupt tendencies after they were credited with some of the major corruption busts.

As such, he believed that it is the same for the AG’s Department, together with MACC, that they will not want to just sit in tender board meetings to be an ineffective shields for the administration, against allegations of corruption and mismanagement, but they want to be effective in upholding and enhancing integrity, accountability, transparency and good governance.

Because of this, he called upon the Chief Minister to show his good leadership and initiate discussion with the MACC and the AG’s Department to appoint such CeIOs into the various departments and agencies under his state administration.