This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on June 21, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF) chief executive officer (CEO) Datuk CM Vignaesvaran Jeyandran is not vacating the top seat at the organisation despite allegations of misappropriation of funds belonging to HRDF.

“No, definitely no, that is my straightforward answer,” he told The Edge Financial Daily in an interview yesterday when asked whether he had quit because of the allegations.

He also denied he had been asked to resign. To recap, skills training centre SG Education Group CEO Datuk Seri Ganes told reporters last week he had submitted evidence to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) of an alleged misappropriation of RM300 million in HRDF funds. Ganes also claimed to have received information that Vignaesvaran had resigned.

Prior to making the MACC report, Ganes had in a recent HRDF town hall meeting brought up the matter of a training provider who also sits on the HRDF board. He said this created a conflict of interest as the board member is in a position to channel HRDF contracts to his own company. Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaran and Vignaesvaran were also present at the meeting. On the alleged misappropriation of RM300 million, Vignaesvaran said he is baffled how the figure came about, and denied that most of the training was done by a single provider.

“I am not sure how they got the RM300 million figure; my guess is we are a RM1 billion fund, and they took 30% of that total employer levy allocated towards a consolidated fund that works out to RM300 million.

“If, at all, there is any truth in that (allegation), which there isn’t, there are 600 different companies [which run the certification programmes]. Are you telling me that one [training provider] controls all the 600 companies? This is just hearsay and propaganda,” he said.

He said the use of the pooled fund had been suspended temporarily following the allegations. “The HR (human resources) minister announced that he has put up a committee to look into it. The collection will still go on, but no one will use the funds until a decision on how we will use it [is made]. We will wait for further directions.

“It is a policy decision that we are not privy to, as it comes from the government,” he said.

Employers have to contribute 1% of their monthly payroll to the HRDF as levy, of which 70% of the total fund is claimable via various training grants and schemes managed by the HRDF, where employers choose the programmes that suit their business needs. The remaining 30% of the levy goes towards the pooled fund to support strategic initiatives to achieve a 35% skilled workforce by 2020. In 2017, HRDF collected RM712.26 million, and disbursed some RM678.78 million.