Politician allegedly used allocation to fund bridge for personal farm

SEPANG - It has become a public knowledge that politicians in the country have meddled in rural development projects for their own benefits.

Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMap) Business and Communication Faculty lecturer Dr Nor'izah Ahmad revealed that there were politicians who abused powers for personal gain and cronies.

"Based on our findings, there is a politician who had used an allocation (for a rural area project) to build a two-kilometre bridge and after checking, our informant said the project was not even needed.

"However, it was being done as the bridge became a connection for the (politician's) farm," she said when tabling the investigation papers titled 'The Risk of Corruption in Rural Development Sector' in conjunction with the National Level Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption Research Conference, Second Edition 2023 at the Movenpick Convention Centre, here today.

During the conference themed 'Combating Corruption Together: No Endpoint' which began yesterday, a total of 10 research papers were tabled.

The conference was organised through the collaboration with public and private higher learning institutions namely Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMap) and Malaysian Multimedia University.

The conference was a platform for policy discussion and industry players to assess, plan and take appropriate actions to help create a Madani society free of corruption.

The conference became a platform to share research findings in context of governance, integrity and anti-corruption as well as discussing current issues related to risk of corruption, integrity violations and governance weaknesses that can be improved.

The organisation of this conference represented the continuation of the first Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption Research Conference held at Movenpick Convention Centre in Sepang on March 23 and 24, last year.

She added that there were some companies that were blacklisted as they did not complete previous development projects, but were given the project due to interference of politicians.

"There were some companies blacklisted, but due to politicians interfering, these companies could gain rural development projects giving major implications," she said.

She said improvement from a policy and legal point of view regarding the grant of rural development projects must be made to overcome the matter.

The Malaysian rural population is 7,609 thousand while urban population is at 25,048 (Malaysian Statistics Department, 2020).

In Budget 2023, a total of RM10.93 billion was allocated to implement the welfare agenda in the rural areas.