In a letter addressed to Works Minister Fadillah Yusof today, Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said that the state will send the study for an undersea tunnel by the end of the year or early next year, after its completion. The undersea tunnel covers the same route as the proposed third bridge, between George Town and Butterworth.
Lim said the study is currently 83 per cent complete.
“The State Government does not understand your logic in requiring the undersea tunnel project’s feasibility study when it has no relation to the third bridge.
“What was requested by the State Government was approval for the third bridge and not the undersea tunnel,” he wrote.
“Because of this, we hope that our application on the proposal to build the third bridge is given approval in principle,” he said, adding that it would enable the state to take the necessary measures towards realising the project.
Lim’s letter follows Fadillah’s announcement on July 25 that the ministry would shelf the state’s request for a toll-free third bridge as documents were not presented to the ministry despite four reminders to do so. Fadillah said the state had also failed to meet a July 22 deadline.
Lim had first brought up the idea of Penang building a new bridge on its own after criticisms over the state’s undersea tunnel project, including the cost for the feasibility study.
He then wrote a letter seeking approval on the bridge to Prime Minister Najib Razak on May 26.
Criticising Lim for going about the matter unprofessionally and bypassing the ministry, Fadillah had then said approval could not be granted based only on a letter.
Fadillah said that it was not standard practice for the Federal Government to approve a multi-billion ringgit project “without a single piece of documentation”.
He also asked for the feasibility and detailed design studies commissioned by the state for the undersea tunnel project and associated linked roads in order to process the application for the third bridge.
The state currently has two links between the island and the mainland – the first Penang Bridge which was opened in 1985 and the Sultan Abdul Halim Muadzam Shah Bridge (previously named Penang Second Bridge) which opened in 2014.
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