KUALA LUMPUR: The Legal Profession Qualifying Board will be audited once the Act that empowers the audit is gazetted, says M. Kulasegaran.
The Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) said that the law which establishes the board needs to provide the Auditor-General with the authority to audit.
“One of the shortcomings of the (former) Legal Profession Act is that there is no such authority,” he said during his winding up speech in Parliament on Feb 27 in response to a question from Cha Kee Chin (PH-Rasah).
Cha asked about the latest update on the audit for the board.
Kulasegaran said that while amendments to the Legal Profession Act were passed last year to allow such an audit, the act has not yet received its royal assent.
“I am informed that once it has been given royal assent and gazetted, an investigation will be promptly conducted by the Auditor-General,” he said.
He also said that the powers of the Auditor-General were expanded recently, where it can audit any other entities and companies that receive public funds.
“If the government allocates funds to any NGO or board or organization or company, the Auditor General automatically has the authority to conduct investigations and then a report can be made,” he said.
Previously, it was reported in November last year that the accounts of the Legal Profession Qualifying Board (LPQB) were not audited in the last 17 years.
Meanwhile, Kulasegaran said that there are no agencies marked red in the Auditor-General's dashboard.
He said that as of Feb 27, a total of 5,626 issues have been followed up at the Federal level, with 5,312 issues resolved, and marked green.
“314 issues remain under yellow status, with no issues marked red, indicating no backlog in action or exceeding two years,” he said.
He was responding to Chong Zhemin (PH-Kampar) who asked how many agencies are marked as red, meaning that the issues are unsolved for more than two years.
