Ongkili hit out at state DAP secretary Chan Foong Hin for making comments on the issue without having enough facts to support his statement.
“Get your facts right first (and) do justice to your MP job,” he said. Chan is the MP for Kota Kinabalu.
“Obviously he does not know about the Kimanis-Sandakan pipeline project,” said Ongkili, accusing Chan of political immaturity and DAP leaders of being “political novices in government”.
The financial details of the pipeline project were questioned by Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng last week. Lim is secretary-general of the DAP.
Ongkili said the plan was to build a gas pipeline from Kimanis to Sandakan, and eventually to Tawau, to supply gas for industries and electricity generation, thereby solving the 70% dependency on energy imported through the state grid.
The project cost of about RM4.53 billion was fully funded by the federal government.
Ongkili, who was federal minister for energy in the previous federal government, said only someone “very stupid” would reject such a long-term development project.
He said gas supply from Petronas had fuelled the industrialisation on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, in places such as Kuala Terengganu and Kerteh.
The ultimate clients of the pipeline project were Petronas as gas supplier and the energy ministry as the fuel energy user. But project implementation, budget and contracts came under the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department and the finance ministry.
“These issues were outside the ministry’s policy purview and supervision,” he said. “It was utterly irresponsible of Chan to make wild accusations of wrongdoing when he knows nothing regarding the project.”
Ongkili, who is also Parti Bersatu Sabah deputy president and Kota Marudu MP, said as a Sabahan member of the former Barisan Nasional Cabinet, his party fully supported the pipeline projects because of the benefit to Sabah.
Chan had demanded that the BN government come clean on the project and pointed out that Ongkili had previously defended the project. The treasury’s revelations about dubious contract payments showed Ongkili to have been irresponsible as a Cabinet member, Chan had said.
But Ongkili said the finance minister’s allegations of financial misappropriation had not been proven through a thorough and independent investigation. PBS would never condone misappropriation and wrongdoing, he said, and urged that the law be allowed to take its course.
DAP: Why no feasibility study for RM4.5b Sabah gas pipeline?