Purchasing scam

The two mainstream newspapers were full of reports today of the Government spending outrageous sums of money to acquire some common goods.

The Sunday Star headlined the story on their front page: Paying through the nose for tools while The New Sunday Times was more forgiving, headlining their story as Auditor-General’s Report: Spend, spend and overspend

It’s simply outrageous. According to the Auditor-General’s report, the Government paid RM224 for a set of four screwdrivers that would normally cost about RM40 in a hardware store.

Other examples of Government excesses: RM10,700 for a set of technical books that cost RM417, RM5,741 for a two-tonne car jack that you can buy easily for RM50, and a 3.1 megapixel digital camera that cost RM8,254.

Now, what could have happened? A scam involving government departments? It suggests only three possibilities, of which I will mention corruption and fraud as the first two that springs to mind.

The third one is incompetence but surely, nobody can be THAT incompetent to approve a purchase order that is many times the normal price without question?

So, unless someone admits to gross incompetence which will make you ask why are they occupying positions of power when they are incompetent, what are left are only corruption and fraud. To me, they’re almost the same. Whoever is corrupt will most likely find means to defraud. It is a typical purchasing scam and someone must be responsible and answerable.

It’s tax payers’ money that’s involved in these purchases and the Government must be serious enough to find the answer. No sweeping this issue beneath the carpet.