A former deputy minister has called on the government to establish a special monitoring body to oversee ministries’ development spending and prevent overspending and the underutilisation of allocated funds.
Former Batu Pahat MP Puad Zarkashi said the proposed body should ensure that ministries do not exceed their approved budgets, following the Treasury’s disclosure that the Ministry of Rural and Regional Development had spent beyond its allocation.
He added that the body should also monitor ministries that fail to fully utilise their allocated funds, stressing that underspending should not occur when urgent needs remain unmet.
Puad, who served as deputy education minister from 2009 to 2013, said he was surprised during his tenure to discover that the Education Ministry had returned a substantial amount of its allocation to the Finance Ministry.
“I used to visit schools in the interior of Sabah and Sarawak, and was often told that there were insufficient funds to repair dilapidated schools. But later, I discovered that there were unused funds.
“What is actually happening? Is it bureaucracy, inaccurate information about schools’ needs, ‘little Napoleons’ in ministries or laziness? This is an issue that the 2027 Budget should address,” he said in a Facebook post.
The Treasury previously revealed that the ministry led by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had repeatedly exceeded its approved allocations for rural road projects in recent years.
In 2023, the ministry spent RM1.8 billion against an approved allocation of RM1.1 billion. In 2024, expenditure reached RM2 billion against an allocation of RM1.3 billion, while spending in 2025 totalled RM2.3 billion against an approved allocation of RM1.6 billion.
The figures amounted to a cumulative difference of RM2.1 billion between the approved annual allocations and actual expenditure.
The Finance Ministry subsequently said the matter had been “resolved”. However, a DAP MP has lodged a report calling on the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate the issue.
