CHONG Chieng Jen (DAP-Kota Sentosa) has questioned the rationale of the Auditor General’s (AG) Report 2011 not being tabled in the august House even though the House had entered into the second day of debate of the State Budget 2013 Thursday.
Chong, when raising the matter in the House, said it had always been the practice and convention of the House to have the AG’s Report tabled together or around the same time with the state Budget since he became an assemblyman.
He believed that it was appropriate for the AG’s Report to be tabled in the House so that the state assemblymen and assemblywomen could raise issues on the shortcomings that had been highlighted in the report.
“I believe that the honourable members of the House will also be very keen to learn or to be aware on what has been reported in the AG’s Report,” Chong said.
He stated that other assemblymen and assemblywomen would not have a copy of the AG’s Report as the report was only distributed to MPs.
“The copies of AG’s Report that I have are the ones I brought back from the Parliament and if I’m not an MP, I would not have the copies at all,” Chong said.
In his response to the query, DUN Speaker Datuk Amar Mohamad Asfia Awang Nassar said the AG’s Report had not been approved by the state cabinet and therefore it was not being tabled.
Speaking to reporters later, Chong said there was no need for the state cabinet to approve the AG’s Report as the federal cabinet had approved the report and the AG’s Report had been tabled in Dewan Rakyat.
He believed that the reason provided by Mohamad Asfia that the state cabinet had not approved the AG’s Report should not be the ground for not tabling the report in the august House.
“This is the AG’s Report for 2011. If we don’t table the report now, then when are we going to table it? Each year, we only have two sittings and this sitting will be the last sitting for this year,” Chong said.
Meanwhile, Wong Ho Leng (DAP-Bukit Asek) during the sitting requested for written answers to be provided to all the questions submitted by opposition assemblymen and assemblywomen.
“We request written answers to be given to all of us for all the questions which are not answered during the question-and-answer session because we do not want the DUN staff’s efforts as well as our efforts to be wasted,” he said.