He was responding to Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Wee Ka Siong who said the ECRL project cannot be compared with the RM6.3 bllion Penang undersea tunnel and three roads project, as the ECRL was a G2G deal.
Wee, who is also MCA deputy president, said this in answer to Lim who had earlier harped on the fact that the ECRL was directly awarded instead of through an open tender.
In mocking Wee’s G2G explanation, Lim showed the picture of himself signing an agreement with a Chinese construction company for the undersea tunnel and roads project in 2011.
In the picture, Prime Minister Najib Razak is spotted as a witness at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Beijing Urban Construction Group (BUCG) chairman Liu Longhua for the undersea tunnel and three roads project.
Najib was seen standing next to his counterpart from China, Premier Wen Jiabao in the background, in a signing ceremony held in Putrajaya.
“See. That is also G2G, April 28, 2011. Witnessed by whom? The right honourable PM of Malaysia and the the premier of the Peoples’ Republic of China.
“A representative from the construction company, and me, representing Penang. This, too, can be described as G2G. But, we insisted on an open tender despite it being a G2G,” Lim told reporters at the Penang Digital Library here today.
He said despite Penang’s “G2G” deal on the undersea tunnel and roads project, and contracts awarded via open tender, the project was investigated by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).
Lim said since the ECRL was also a G2G project, but awarded directly, it too must be investigated by the MACC.
Wee had said the ECRL is a government-to-government project between Malaysia and China. He was reported to have said that it would be unfair to compare the Penang undersea tunnel and roads project to the railway project.
The RM6.3 billion infrastructure project came under renewed scrutiny by the Barisan Nasional (BN) following a fresh probe by the MACC recently.
Since then, the Penang government and BN have revived the issue, which was a hotly debated topic in Penang in 2013 and 2014.
The 7.2km undersea tunnel will connect George Town’s Pangkor Road and Bagan Ajam in Butterworth. It is scheduled to begin in 2023.
The “three main roads” (formerly three paired roads) stretch from Air Itam to the Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway (5.7km), Tanjung Bungah to Teluk Bahang (10.53km), and Jalan Pangkor-Gurney Drive junction to Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway (4.1km).
It was awarded via an open tender in 2013 to Consortium Zenith-BUCG Sdn Bhd (CZBUCG).
However, BUCG (M) Sdn Bhd had applied to have itself removed as one of three partners in the larger CZBUCG in September 2016 following a fatal crane incident at a construction site in Kuala Lumpur in August the same year.
Lim had reportedly said at the time the Penang government “did not want an irresponsible contractor to be part of the undersea tunnel project. So we will allow BUCG to opt out from the consortium.”