“It is our opinion that the freezing of all our community spending is absurd, irrational, and without basis. Our opinion is based on the simple fact that the Selangor government’s own audit (in February 2017) did not recommend the freezing of our community spending”
KUALA LUMPUR: PKR’s Kelana Jaya MP Wong Chen today accused the Selangor state government led by his party colleagues of arbitrarily freezing the community spending for his constituency.
In a Facebook posting, Wong said that the state informed his office of the decision via a letter in early June, weeks after Wong had taken to his social media platform on Facebook to explain his dispute with the state government regarding an audit they had conducted on his constituency community spending.
Wong also said that according to the letter, a part of the community spending was in fact frozen in July 2016, months before the state even completed their audit and made any findings.
“It is our opinion that the freezing of all our community spending is absurd, irrational, and without basis. Our opinion is based on the simple fact that the Selangor government’s own audit (in February 2017) did not recommend the freezing of our community spending,” he wrote.
“Therefore, to freeze our community spending four months later in June 2017 is absolutely perplexing, bordering on vindictive,” he added.
Wong previously publicly published his complaints against the state’s actions after the audit findings released in February reprimanded his office for the way Wong’s office had conducted community spendings.
He previously demanded another audit, after saying that the state did not seek his cooperation or did not clarify matters with his office before making their findings.
“The findings did not make any allegations of misappropriation or misuse of money. As for the recommendations, they too are not onerous,” Wong had said.
Wong also published the contact information of the State Treasurer in his posting in a bid to ascertain the reason behind the freezing.
“No Member of Parliament or assemblyman should be made to feel they can be subjected to arbitrary executive decisions,” he said.
“No Member of Parliament or assemblyman in Selangor should suffer the Kafkaesque episode that my office had to go through in the last five months,” he added.
Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali previously said that his office was not involved and would not interfere with the audit conducted by the Treasury.
The audit is regarding the spending of the RM250,000 annual community spending allocation given to all elected representatives in Selangor.
Source: The Malay Mail Online
