The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) today decided to discuss the controversy surrounding the tender process for the procurement of new helicopters for the armed forces at its next meeting.
MCPXCommittee chairperson, Padang Besar MP Azmi Khalid said the meeting is needed to inform the public of the real situation. Asked if Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak who has been implicated in the controversy would be called in for the meeting, he replied: "We will see first, I don't want to jump the gun.""That is why we need a briefing first as I am not going to pre-empt this," he stressed.Azmi said the discussion was needed as committee members need to know the actual process of the purchase."The (meeting) will also discuss on how to make a decision on why they (the government) have to pay four times than the book value. The norm in the purchase in companies in that part of the world is only 2.6."How come you have to pay 4.7 more? So we'll leave it (the issue) to the members of this committee. I think they want to know the rationale of how it was done and why," he added.Azmi also assured that the people and the ministry involved in the Eurocopter deal would be called in.
Two other matters for discussionApart from the helicopter deal, the upcoming meeting will also look into the high-speed broadband contracts that were awarded to Telekom Malaysia as well as Maybank's acquisition of a 56 percent stake in bank Internasional Indonesia, a financially struggling bank, with a discounted price of RM4.26 billion."The committee will keep having discussions for us to come up with better measures to curb these situations," he said, adding that the meeting however will not involve any investigation.Today's meeting which was held in the Parliament building also discussed the introduction of the use of bio-metric system to handle the issue of illegal immigrants in the country.No date has been fixed for the next meeting. In another development, Azmi said the committee had suggested that the Home Ministry help Immigration Department set-up a bio-metric system at all entry-points on land and sea throughout the country to curb illegal immigrants issue.The RM50 million system, which is now being introduced in Tawau, Sabah, uses a high-technology system which detects the identity of an immigrant automatically by using the thumb-print."There are a lot of (illegal) immigrants who were sent back (to their respective countries) and had questionable records but came back to Malaysia with a different name," said Azmi.Even though the bio-metric system in Sabah costs RM50 million, this however could help reduce the security cost of the people, he explained."Social cost will also be much reduced. If the bio-metric system can be used in Singapore to observe the outflow of immigrants from Malaysia, I don't see why we should not use it too," he said.The bio-metric system, he noted, could be used between Thailand and Malaysia and other boarders in the country.He further suggested that civil-volunteered corps Rela could also be utilised to guard the coastal regions."The illegal immigrations will not come to designated entry-points. They come through to any coasts unguarded, now we have introduced Rela as an organisation, and they have quite the strength in numbers. Why not utilise them?” he asked.The three-hour meeting which was held with representatives from the Home Ministry was also attended by opposition MPs Tony Pua (DAP-Petaling Jaya Selatan), Tan Seng Giaw (DAP-Kepong) and William Leong (DAP-Selayang).
source by malaysiakini
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