Geisha Kow­lessar

Out­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion in en­sur­ing the coun­try re­ceived fair roy­al­ties from crude oil and se­vere staff chal­lenges were iden­ti­fied as some of the chal­lenges fac­ing the En­er­gy Min­istry.

The dis­clo­sure was made by act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of En­er­gy Hei­di Wong, who along with oth­er min­istry of­fi­cials, ap­peared be­fore yes­ter­day's Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee held in Par­lia­ment.

She said cer­tain pro­vi­sions with­in the 1969 Pe­tro­le­um Act need­ed to be re­ex­am­ined in­clud­ing that of a prop­er pric­ing struc­ture for crude oil.

"We have over the years sub­mit­ted cer­tain re­vi­sions with re­spect to the Act but I can­not say why this has not hap­pened," Wong added.

The com­mit­tee which was head­ed by Bhoe Tewarie ex­am­ined the re­port of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on the Pub­lic Ac­counts for the fi­nan­cial year 2014 re­lat­ed to the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries.

De­scrib­ing these short­com­ings as the symp­toms of far-reach­ing con­se­quences, Wong said, oth­er chal­lenges were the out­stand­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion of a re­vised struc­ture for the min­istry and im­prove­ment in re­spons­es from oth­er min­istries and agen­cies which the min­istry was heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on for ser­vice de­liv­ery.

The com­mit­tee al­so heard of chal­lenges es­pe­cial­ly in the hu­man re­source de­part­ment which Wong said was a prob­lem plagu­ing oth­er min­istries which need­ed to be crit­i­cal­ly ad­dressed.

"We need tech­ni­cal com­pe­tent skills. We have some es­tab­lished po­si­tions which we have been mak­ing re­peat­ed re­quests to be filled and a key one is the func­tion of the pe­tro­le­um ac­coun­tant....we have rev­enue is­sues which we need to be se­ri­ous­ly trashed out," Wong said.

She said the last time such a po­si­tion was filled was ei­ther 2006 or 2008.

A com­plete re­struc­tur­ing of the min­istry was al­so ur­gent­ly need­ed and al­though there were some changes im­ple­ment­ed in 2006, since then noth­ing fur­ther was done, Wong said.