Ramanan Ramakrishnan. — AZLINA ABDULLAH/The Star
PETALING JAYA: Datuk Ramanan Ramakrishnan has been appointed as the new Malaysian Indian Community Transformation Unit (Mitra) Special Committee chairman under the Prime Minister's Department.
The Sungai Buloh MP will be chairing the first meeting Wednesday (April 19) in Putrajaya.
A source said appointments to the committee were made by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
Other committee members include Datuk C. Sivaraj, Klang MP Ganabatirau Veraman, Segamat MP R. Yuneswaran and Mitra director-general Raveendran Nair.
Former prime minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob had returned Mitra to the Prime Minister's Department following a request by MIC president Tan Sri Vigneswaran in September 2022.
In 2021, Mitra was investigated by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) over allegations of misappropriation of funds from 2019 to 2021.
It was reported that loopholes allowed millions of ringgit to be misappropriated by recipients.
Graft investigators discovered weaknesses in the management of Mitra, a special government unit set up to address the socio-economic development of the Indian community, specifically the B40 group.
Mitra did not require recipients to submit detailed expenditure reports for validation and exploited this lack of scrutiny to their advantage, the report said.
