Doubts over construction progress, Bumi participation in Pan Borneo Highway
Published on: Monday, September 09, 2019
By: Bernama
KUCHING: The Malaysian Bumiputera Contractors Association, Sarawak (PKBM) believes the construction of the Sarawak stretch of the Pan Borneo Highway is still behind schedule unlike claimed by the project delivery partner (PDP) Lebuh Raya Borneo Utara Bhd (LBU).
PKBM Sarawak president Datuk Seri Abang Aditajaya Abang Alwi doubted that almost nearly half of the first phase of the Sarawak stretch has been completed as reported by the media recently when the government agreed to terminate the services of LBU.
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“There is a delay in the project of about two per cent. Now is actually only at 40 per cent against the scheduled 42 per cent. But in reality the discrepancy may be higher. So it’s not true that the project is ahead of schedule,” he told Bernama.
Abang Aditajaya said he was quite confident of the construction being behind schedule as he had received inputs from Bumiputera consortiums involved in the project. He believed that LBU might not have provided the true picture on the construction progress and PKBM was now in the midst of preparing a report to present to the Works Ministry and Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC) on the matter, he said.
He also wanted the Ministry and MACC to investigate the actual number of Bumiputera contractors involved in the Sarawak portion of the Pan Borneo Highway as their numbers might not even reach the 30 per cent quota as claimed by LBU.
“The report from LBU to the government which stated that the quota of 30 per cent had been achieved was very doubtful as we received 28 complaints involving about 28 consortiums comprising more than 100 G7 Bumiputera companies from all over Sarawak.
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“Several Bumiputera contractors from Sarawak which had been issued with the Letter of Intent (LOI) to be involved in the project implementation since 2016 were still waiting for the Letter of Award (LOA) from the main contractor,” he said.
He said, PKBM which had its first Annual General Meeting on Saturday had also received reports that the main contractors under PDP had offered to buy back contracts awarded to some local consortiums in the bid to monopolise the project.
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“These consortiums had stated that the main contractor offered payment of one per cent from the contract value received by them in the hope of using the names of these companies as proxies with the works later continued to be undertaken by them to deceive the government,” he said.
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