AN internal power struggle within the scandal-hit Human Resources Development Corp (HRD Corp) is said to have led to the exposé involving an alleged multi-million wrongdoings in its “Skills Passport” project, a source said.
It is reliably learnt that a senior staff in the statutory body has been feeding a news portal information concerning alleged abuse of power involving a top management personnel there.
The former is said to be doing so in the hope that the latter would resign following the exposé, thus paving the way for him to take over the coveted post in the organisation which sits on billions of ringgit in workers’ training levy from employers.
“The two of them were previously very close and joined HRD Corp around the same time. But eventually they had a falling out,” the source told FocusM on condition of anonymity.
“Now, one of them is feeding information to a news portal about the nonsense going on inside. That person is in the know as he’s also part of HRD Corp’s senior management.”
The source added that the so-called ‘whistle-blower’ was leveraging his close ties with the managing editor of the fledging news portal to smear “his higher up colleague”.
It is learnt that the so-called ‘whistle-blower’ was not exposing the “scandal” for altruistic reasons but was in fact eyeing for the post held by the senior HRD Corp staff who is at the centre of the storm.
Pressed for more clue, the source hinted that the ‘whistle blower’ is a former political activist-turned-corporate man. He and the managing editor of the news portal went back a long way with the former also been regularly featured on the said news portal.
For the uninitiated, HRD Corp is an agency under the Human Resources Ministry which was also recently rocked by a scandal that saw five ex-aides to the minister being sacked over alleged impropriety in another multi-million ringgit project to bring in foreign workers into the country.
Yesterday (May 9), a taskforce was set up by the ministry to investigate alleged wrongdoings in the Skills Passport project.
Based on news reports, the contract was awarded to a company with about 50% foreign ownership (by an Indian national) without approval from the HRD Corp board. The awarding process also allegedly did not go through the required procurement and approval processes.
The investigators have been given three days to investigate before presenting their findings to a panel headed by ministry secretary-general Datuk Seri Zaini Ujang.
The entire matter came to light after the deputy secretary-general for governance and monitoring under the Finance Ministry Datuk Rosli Yaakub wrote a letter on April 10 to HRD Corp chairman Datuk R. Rajasekharan and chief executive Datuk Shahul Hameed Dawood.
Rosli had highlighted his concerns over the way the contract was awarded. The letter alleged that Shahul had misled the board and got HRD Corp into paying the RM12 fee per worker to use the Skills Passport platform.
Rosli said this totalled some RM159 mil involving about 4.4 million workers. – May 10, 2023
