Klang District and Land Office (PDT Klang) is conducting an internal investigation into the illegal land ownership transfer issue involving its employees, says Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari.
He said a Registrar’s Caveat had been inserted into the land title under investigation to prevent any new transactions from being carried out.
A Registrar’s Caveat is entered when the Registrar of Titles or Land Administrator deems it necessary or desirable to prevent fraud or improper dealing, to protect the interest of the state or if there is an error on the title document.
“Control and improvement measures are underway to prevent any recurrence of this incident,” he said at the Selangor State Assembly sitting at Bangunan Dewan Negeri Selangor in Shah Alam.
He was replying to Azmizam Zaman Huri (PH-Pelabuhan Klang) who asked what steps were being taken by the state government to address the issue.
Last month, The Star reported that police had uncovered a cartel involved in illegal land ownership transfers at PDT Klang.
The investigations, which began last September, led to the arrest of 17 suspects linked to the scheme for allegedly transferring ownership of 9.4ha of land valued at RM7.1mil.
Amirudin, who is also Sungai Tua assemblyman, said results of the investigation had been reported to the police and PDT Klang provided full cooperation and assistance to the police to complete the probe.
“The employees involved have been remanded and placed in new departments while awaiting trial,” he added.
To a supplementary question from Azmizam on steps taken at all state government agencies to ensure the integrity of public employees, Amirudin said among actions taken was the updating of the Organisational Anti-Corruption Plan (OACP).
This plan is used at state government level and had been extended to district level to be implemented in district offices, he added.
Amirudin said surprise visits were also being done to ensure services provided continued to be effective and did not violate regulations or directives currently in force.
Training and workshops were also being held relating to the six core integrity functions involving heads of integrity units with Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), as well as briefings, talks and integrity workshops in departments.
“The state government will take mitigation measures for incidents that have already occurred as well as proactive measures involving disciplinary action, cooperation with MACC in briefing programmes to emphasise and increase integrity awareness,” said Amirudin.
“The Public Service Department will also implement rotations more thoroughly and regularly so that any officer is not in one department or unit for a long period of time, which may provide room for abuse.”
To strengthen the land management system currently in use, namely the digital e-Tanah, Amirudin said physical security controls were being carried out more comprehensively through closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) systems, biometric devices and transparent glass walls to monitor servers in the data centre.
Control of the server is limited to the server administrator only.
“This means that biometric authentication is in place for each user before records can be opened or transactions carried out in the e-Tanah programme,” he explained.
“Other methods include applying security controls through limited access via the use of identification, password and biometric authentication, and network security using firewalls to control traffic in and out of the e-Tanah system, as well as the use of Intrusion Prevention System software to detect any threats that may happen.”
