Lab equipment worth 10 million under-utilised

obmar · Lab equipment worth 10 million under-utilised

Of the 151 lab equipment at the Chemistry Department, 49 of them costing RM10.58mil were used for less than 65 days for the whole year. This included equipment such as the genetic analyser, the universal forensic comparison microscope, the VSC4 and ESDA infra-red document examination system.

The Auditor-General's report said some of the reasons for the under-utilisation of the equipment was because the officers were not familiar with the new equipment, that usage depended on requests from the department's clients such as the police, the Customs Department, the Health Ministry and there were cases where the usage was not recorded in the log book.

Furthermore from checks carried out, the Auditor-General's department found that two pieces of apparatus - the autoclave Astell ASB300 which costs RM91,165 at a Perak branch office and the microwave digester worth RM105,685 in a Kuching branch office of the Chemistry Department - had not been used at all from 2003 to 2005.

The equipment which was bought in 1999 and 2000 respectively were still in good condition.

The Chemistry Department had said the reason the autoclave was not used was because such a high capacity equipment was not needed; and the microwave gester was not utilised because it was not suitable to analyse metal in food.

The equipment would now be sent to the Environmental Lab instead to analyse metal content in water and effluents.

The Auditor-General's report also found that between 2001 and 2005 the Chemistry Department had 10 equipment valued at RM2.12mil which were spoilt and in need of repair.

The delay in repairs was because it was difficult to get spare parts. There were also 55 broken or old laboratory equipment worth RM3.32mil which were uneconomical to repair and which were not disposed of.

Over 19 of these cost more than RM50,000 per unit which meant that these needed the approval from the Finance Ministry through the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry to get rid of, however efforts to get the approval has not been made.

As a result, this has caused the storerooms to be crammed with these equipment.

A training room for a branch office in Pahang for example was not being used for training because it was used instead to store some of these broken equipment.