There is a pattern to the auditor general's annual report. Every year, hundreds of millions of taxpayer money is lost, either to leakage, wastage or negligence, by those in public service.
The year 2021 is no different: the government let slip public funds totalling RM158.08 million. Give it three Ds: disgraceful, distressing and dreadful.
Like in all the years that went before, shock waves travel the length and breadth of the nation for a day or two, only to be forgotten until the next one comes along, disclosing to a disbelieving Malaysia an even more appalling drainage of public money.
This pattern must be broken if the nation is not to be taken down the path of financial ruin. Let's not forget Malaysia's debt is RM1.5 trillion. If only the hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, were saved, we would be debt-free.
Think of the hospitals, doctors, nurses, schools, teachers and some such things we would have had. But there is something from the Auditor General's Office that disturbs.
Follow-ups on audit issues are hard to do because it is complicated and time-consuming, Auditor General Datuk Seri Nik Azman Nik Abdul Majid told a media briefing on Thursday.
We would have thought our chief secretary to the government and secretaries-general would have jumped into action to help the overstretched Auditor General's Office. The fact that the leakage is an annual occurrence says no one is jumping to break the pattern.
Here is how the pattern can be broken. Firstly, as the prime minister has ordered, cabinet ministers must place the audit report on the top of their reading list.
Having read it, they must pull away in high gear. Secondly, the chief secretary to the government must summon the secretaries-general, because it is in his office that integration happens.
In this way, the secretaries-general can't tell the Auditor General's Office that we are waiting for this and that ministries to do this or that thing. Complicated or time-consuming, loopholes must be closed.
Take the case of the faulty ventilators acquired by the Health Ministry. Of the 136 ventilators procured between 2020 and April last year, 108 were deemed unsafe. And only 28 were usable.
Are our civil servants in charge of procurement so inept as to not know what works and what doesn't? Or is there something more going on here? Either way, they must be held accountable.
One usual recourse in such circumstances is to seek compensation from the supplier. But guess what? There was no written agreement between the supplier and the Health Ministry.
This is a deal with many "whys". One of them is: why pay the supplier when there isn't a written agreement? The Health Ministry has a lot to answer for.
Troublingly for us, it is not the only one. Other ministries and agencies are similarly making the government bleed red. Putrajaya has a prominence of its own, RM799.34 million for a monorail that was first supposed to be an underground light rail transit.
Several structures later, including a tunnel and bus depot costing RM12.2 million, there is no sight of the monorail. Again, why? Well, again, no written documents.
Some of our civil servants are getting away with murder. Finally, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission must go after everyone implicated in the report. Yes, fish and fry.