Referring to Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai’s statement that the price is not any where near finalised, Pua said it begs the question as to why the government has signed the contract with a contractor before the price was concluded.
“Not only did Putrajaya fail to conduct an open and competitive tender to award the project to ensure taxpayers received their value for money, now Liow is saying that the multi-billion ringgit contract was signed with a foreign company without even first negotiating the price of the project.
“How more incompetent and irresponsible can the minister and the government get? Unless the Government has an ulterior motive to award it to CCCC in the first place?” Pua said.
He also called for the transport minister to live up to his transparency claim and make public the contracts signed with CCCC and China’s Exim Bank, as well as the feasibility studies carried out by consultants on the project.
However, Pua contended that if the project cost announced by Prime Minister Najib Razak during the tabling of Budget 2017 was indeed the finalised contract amount signed with CCCC, then it just reveals how Liow is clueless about something so important.
The Petaling Jaya Utara MP said this was apparent from Liow’s response to his argument that the ECRL would be the most expensive project of its kind in the world at RM91.7 million per kilometer.
“Liow’s accusation that I was making assumptions on the project cost only goes to prove that he is indeed clueless over the entire ECRL project award exercise,” Pua said.
The DAP National Publicity Secretary was referring to a report by The Star in which Liow is quoted as saying: “The cost of the ECRL was still not finalised yet.
“We have to go into negotiation on every kilometre, so where did he get the cost? When we implement this project, we will tell the public exactly how much one kilometre costs. When we go into negotiation, we’ll see which areas we can cut costs.”
Pua said it was not the opposition MPs who came up with the figure of RM55 billion for the 600km ECRL project.
“It was Najib who told the Dewan Rakyat ‘the 600km rail will connect townships such as Port Klang, ITT Gombak, Bentong, Mentakab, Kuantan, Kemaman, Kerteh, Kuala Terengganu, Kota Bharu and end in Tumpat, with an estimated cost of RM55 billion’,” Pua said, adding that even Minister in the PM’s Department Abdul Rahman Dahlan, who is in charge of the Economic Planning Unit, did not dispute the project cost.