PETALING JAYA: The Auditor General released his 2010 annual report yesterday and in my opinion, the Ministry of Defence got away lightly.
Since the report is in the PDF format, I am unable to post them directly here although readers can download the whole report here.
In the synopsis of the report, the Auditor General mentioned three issues in the Defence Ministry which they investigated. First the poor maintenance of Aviation Ground Support Vehicle by the RMAF; the poor management of the Territorial Army and the unsatisfactory progress and planning for the construction of an Army camp in Sarawak.
Poor progress and planning of camp construction project seemed to be the norm when it comes to the Defence Ministry. The same thing is reported on annual basis by the Auditor General. It seemed no one has learned from past mistakes. Have they not heard of the Transit and Tebrau camps fiascos? Or simply since this is another build and transfer project, everyone looked the other way as the contractor make a killing?
As for the Terriers, the report noted that TA units had poor attendance together with limited and obsolete facilities. With the Defence Minister calling for the 500,000 strong TA members within the next few years we wonder whether “less is more?”
And as for poor serviceability of AGSV with RMAF units, its simply a reflection of the bigger problems in the air force.
So what do you think?
–Malaysian Defence
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OK I am going to say regarding the territorial army.This bad state of affairs has been ongoing since day 1 of the territorial army. They get the hand me down weapons, hand me down transports, hand me down camps , bullets that more often than not misfires, lack of resources for training. Uniforms that are old and not even having enough jungle combat boots to issue to the soldiers.Jungle training wearing drill boots is something unthinkable but it happens in the TA’S. Now the TA uses M16’s something which the regulars does not except for those using grenade launchers attached to the rifles as the Steyr is not equipped to hand le grenade launchers and new versions are not bought.
While the government wants the TA to be the second line of defence they arm and equip them with outdated weapons some of which are so well used that the gun sights are loose, jump with every shot fired, well worn down moving parts. Its an attitude. Its a sickness that seems unchanging and incapable of change. All the old things are pushed to the TA’s. Compared this to the Aussie and the UK TA and you will see the difference as these TA’s are expected to be called up for operation Herrick in Afghanistan . Even when our TA are called up during the last emergency they are armed by discards like the HK33 and the Italian rifles which were problematic.
So how to get their moral high?
We cant even equipped the regular army properly, what else the reserve! The only way i could think of equipping up to 500k TA (BTW i know rela is not army reserve but if you include them, there you get your 500k or more) is to use weapons from the first insurgency era as part of the equipment (even that i dont know whether will be enough)
Well if the idea that during a potential war, the strategist want to use the TA as what as the North Vietnam use the VC, well i personally think the TA is slightly better equipped than the VC 🙂
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Thats why some people claimed that Rela and the TA are just one of the way the government win elections.
If the Territorial Army can not be made into a competent and credible force, then it should be scrapped. The money could be better used elsewhere.
As for the Auditor’s Report, we all know its contents are limited. Apparently their mandate does not extend to bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, graft, embezzlement and so on…