State Treasury Department
...Quality Accounts Through a Proper and Well-Defined Accounting Procedures and Guidelines

Encik Allan Tay...is convinced by top management support of Treasury's accounting progress

The Sarawak Treasury Department located at Menara Pelita, Petra Jaya Kuching is the headquarters of all the Divisional Treasury offices throughout Sarawak.

It is a State government agency of the Ministry of Finance and Public Utilities. Whilst the State Financial Secretary's Office deals with financial policies, the Treasury Department is concerned mainly with accounting policies and procedures of the state government with the main responsibility of producing quality and accurate accounting reports.

"Officially, we are reporting directly to the State Financial Secretary at Wisma Bapa Malaysia," explained Encik Allan Tay Ah Noh, the Acting Accountant General, when RAKAN Sarawak paid a visit to the Department in March this year. Encik Tay was speaking in the capacity of Acting Accountant General to Encik Wan Mohd. Yusop bin Wan Moss as he was away on a month-long course in Kuala Lumpur at the time.

Areas of Responsibility

At the headquarters, policies and instructions are formulated and carried out and this involves accounting policies, procedures and guidelines. "One of our main functions is to prepare the Annual Public Accounts for the State Government," Encik Tay explained "and we are given a period of 4-5 months to come up with such accounts for auditing before tabling in the DUN." The other main services provided by the Department include Government Payments and Revenue collections.

Payment procedures

The main area of service that the Treasury is providing is the payments process. All sorts of Government payment must go through the Treasury Department as only this department is allowed to maintain bank accounts.

"Of course our payments are based on payment vouchers from the various Government departments," said Encik Tay. "For example, if JKR is to pay certain Contractor a specific sum, they would prepare a payment voucher with all the supporting documents and pass it to the respective divisional Treasury offices for the payment to be made. We have one in each Division."

For Bahagian Kuching, the Divisional office is currently situated at Bangunan Baitulmal, at Jalan P. Ramlee. On average, the office alone processes some 10,000 payment vouchers per month for the Kuching Division, which is about 300-400 payments per day.

Revenue Collection

Another service provided by the Department is the collection of revenue. Encik Tay explained that "... for example, we collect JKR water sales; JKR will bill the consumers who will pay at the Treasury."

Besides that, the Department also collect other revenues and one of the most important revenue collections is the timber royalty obtained via the Forestry Department which bills the timber companies.

The Department is also involved in the issuing of Trade Licences and collecting of the fees in Sibu, Miri and Sri Aman Divisions.

Encik Tay explained that "...we have introduced the Trade Licence system and through this we are able to monitor the number of trade licences which have expired. Compare to previous years when we have to search these expired licences manually by means of cards - which was time consuming - now we are able to track down those license defaulters very quickly and issue them reminders."

Among other revenues collected by the Department are the State Sales Tax (SST), Entertainment Duties and Pawn Farm Licence Fees.

Complaints?

"Yes, there are complaints here and there from certain quarters and members of the public," said Encik Tay, "but they are not that many, maybe one or two in a year," he added. As regards payments, Encik Tay said that, "...we have our Piagam Pelanggan or the Client Charter where it is stated that we must process the payment vouchers within 5 days. We did a survey throughout our divisional treasury offices and found out that most have complied with the Charter. Maybe there are a few cases where we encounter problem such as mistakes in the vouchers or the department submitting the vouchers did not comply accordingly with certain procedures. That would delay the process as it would take time by the department concerned to come back to us with their clarification and rectification if any," said Encik Tay.

Staff strength

A proposal for restructuring of the Department's staff strength has been approved by the Public Service Department (JPA) recently. "With such approval, we're quite happy with staffing. There may be vacancies at random in the Department which is yet to be filled up but the situation is not that critical," added Encik Tay.

"A few years back our divisional treasuries were headed by Grade W5 Assistant Accountants but now they are headed by Grade W3 Accountants, whom we believe will be able to dispense better services.

Changes to accounting procedures

Encik Tay admitted that the Department have been following the existing accounting procedures for so many years but is in the process of reviewing and re-engineering certain accounting procedures and processes with a view to keep abreast with modern accounting developments.

"We have brought about quite a bit of changes already to our organisation's processes, for example, reviewing Treasury Forms where the contents of these forms are found to be less relevant today. In this respect, we are trying to review and update Treasury Forms used by most of the government departments," added Encik Tay. "We have reviewed quite a number of forms such as Payment Voucher, Journal Voucher and Treasury Cash Book and we are keeping an eye on other forms that need to be changed as time moves on and this we have to do gradually. Currently, we are trying our utmost to re-engineer as well as automate as far as possible our accounting processes and procedures so that we are confident with our system and dispense our services efficiently as we move on. We treat these as challenges".


Other areas of change that the Department have implemented are:-

* Decentralisation of accounting process to Divisional Treasuries.
* Centralisation of payment process to Divisional Treasuries (arising from the closure of the Sub-Treasuries).
* Direct credit of staff salary through diskette.
* Investment instruction to Financial Institutions via instruction letter.
* Bulk payment system with Telekom Malaysia, SESCO & MAS.
* Automated facsimile payment advice.
* Decentralisation of payroll printing and distribution process to Divisional Treasuries.
* Allotments payment by direct credit to beneficiary's bank accounts via diskette.

On the implementation of SIFBAS, (a joint project by State Financial Secretary's office and Treasury Department) Encik Tay said that he was happy with the progress so far. SIFBAS stands for State Integrated Financial, Budgeting and Accounting Systems. This refers to a complete set of accounting system with no duplication of data key-in. All the data will be in the databank which is shared by all government departments and any authorised users can have access to this data. "With such system, the Department will be able to produce yearly or monthly accounts which will eventually reveal the State's latest financial position," Encik Tay elaborated. "At the moment, we cannot tell what our financial position is at the click of a button, we are one or two months behind."

Encik Tay also explained that the Department would like to improve on the production of their accounts within a very short time. "Just about a few years back our accounts were about 4 month behind. We need to collect the accounting data from throughout Sarawak, which is a heavy task for us. We even have to collect data from remote areas like Long Lama, Belaga, etc. But we do need all the data for us to produce the accounts for the government. If one office is not able to supply us with their data, it'll hold up the whole process. We have to wait for that figures to come and it can be a long waiting time!"

Encik Tay explained that the Department have managed to cut the reporting time down to about 1 month, which is a reduction of 3 months overdue time and they are trying to improve further by cutting the time to as short as 1 week.

One of the core systems under SIFBAS viz. Expenditure Accrual Accounting System (EASy) is now on pilot run for 4 departments (SFS, Treasury, CMD, Resident, Kota Samarahan). EASy is expected to be fully implemented starting next year.

It is noted that State Treasury Department is now undergoing a series of transformation through continuous improvements with a clear vision and mission. There is full commitment from the top management to strive for excellence and the Department is certainly heading in the right direction toward achieving its objectives and goals.