MARA, Post and Sime Darby Fiasco

Officials from Sime Darby Bhd will be hauled up before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to explain their financial losses. PAC chairman Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid said the officials will be summoned before the parliamentary panel in two weeks (Middle of June).

Also likely to be hauled up will be representatives from the government’s investment arm - Khazanah Nasional Berhad — which has stakes in Pos Malaysia, and the Ministry of Finance. Sime Darby's main shareholder is government asset manager PNB.

Both cases were high profile not only due to the wide media coverage of the losses but a serious matter of spending public money.

We hope and pray, the next one to be hauled up will be the officers of MARA as millions of public money has been spent. Guess how much MARA spent per year? Your guess is as good as mine.

The public had been appealing MARA, like many of Malaysia's public services that use the people's money badly needed to start posting their accounts on an open access website, so all can see just how those millions of ringgits spent by them.

On May 27, Sime Darby posted a January-March net loss of RM308.6 million, compared with a RM150.6 million profit a year ago after massive cost-overruns bled its energy division.

The loss was the first since the country’s second-biggest listed company was established in 2007, when it merged with two other government-controlled plantation groups.

Meanwhile, Pos Malaysia’s net profit also eroded by 93 per cent to RM1.6mil for the first quarter of this year. The losses amounting to RM19.4mil in the quarter has been attributed to the company’s investment in the financially-troubled Transmile Group Bhd.