MB chides Kelana Jaya MP over audit protest

SHAH ALAM: Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Azmin Ali (pic) reprimanded Kelana Jaya MP Wong Chen for making public his protest on the auditing of his constituency’s financial allocation.

He added all MPs, who receive financial allocation, regardless of their political affiliation, will be audited.

“The audit department can audit anyone it chooses to without interference from the executive,” he said after attending a Hari Raya open house here yesterday.

“I myself have been audited and I didn’t make a fuss about it. I hope he (Wong), as an MP, understands the auditing process,” he said, adding that Wong should have voiced his grouses directly with the state government.

In a Facebook posting, Wong claimed the allocation was suspended following his earlier post which stated that the audit was carried out “without due process and six findings that were wrong, baseless and trivial”.

Wong had published all details pertaining to the audit process, including the audit report on his Facebook on Wednesday.

When contacted earlier yesterday, Wong said his office’s community programme allocation was frozen since June 2. As a result, his office had to terminate a welfare programme for the urban poor in his constituency.

“This is not political but administrative.

“On what basis did the treasury officers freeze my office’s spending last month?” he asked.

Wong said he had written several letters to the state treasury and the audit department.

“And the audit department did not make any recommendations to freeze my funding, so how did the treasury come to that decision?”.

Wong made public his grouses about the state’s audit process and findings of his office’s community spending in 2014 and 2015 via Facebook on May 23 after failing to resolve the issue with the state administration since February.

He said state treasurer Mohd Redzuan Hasan replied saying it would look into the matter in a letter dated May 18.

However, his office received another letter on June 9 that all community spending allocated for his constituency has been suspended from June 2.Selangor senior executive councillor Datuk Teng Chang Khim said Wong could have come to the state secretariat personally to seek a clarification.

But Wong said he did not want to be seen as abusing his power: “They wrote me letters so I replied to them via letters.”