THE Youth and Sports Ministry has maintained the direct-tender process for all its contracts, even after an incident in 2016 in which a senior ministry official was alleged to have embezzled up to RM107 million in government funds.

Deputy Youth and Sports Minister Steven Sim said RM357.80 million out of RM777.14 million of the total acquisitions by the ministry between 2016 and 2018 was made through direct tender and limited tender, instead of an open-tender process.

“Last year, the total amount of acquisitions obtained without an open-tender system reached RM264.2 million, which exceeded the amount gained through open tender, which was RM173.7 million,” he said at a press conference at the Parliament lobby today.

Sim added that the ministry will restart the corruption risk management (CRM) plan to avoid any wrongdoing.

The plan was halted in May 2017 by the previous administration.

“However, under this new administration, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission has ordered CRM to be implemented again,” he said, adding that many of the direct tenders took place during the SEA Games held last year.

He said the new Pakatan Harapan team at the ministry also discovered that there was room for improvement in the ministry’s administration and has initiated an overhaul.

“It had to be done immediately because this issue involves the management of the country’s funds as well as for the importance of youth in our country.”

Sim said the ministry was among those which received only small allocations from the federal government and past misdeeds made it difficult to utilise funds fully for the improvement of youth and sports in the country.

“Therefore, we are committed to combat such misappropriations so that we can focus on the limited resources on more important matters.” – August 2, 2018.