Why Sabah’s roads take forever
Published on: Sunday, April 11, 2021
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View of the Pan Borneo Highway.
However, how can these billions of ringgit of funds be protected from abuse and corruption?
Private funds are also abused through corruption by double pricing of invoices.
There are two major roads projects in Sabah that has been under construction for years and will eventually become part of Pan Borneo Highway including the Indonesian Kalimantan Highway from Pontianak in the south to Nunukan (bordering Tawau).
One of the roads is the Penampang-Papar road. This has been under construction for at least eight years and based on the current progress, will take another four years to complete.
This is just about 40KM of dual carriageway.
The other is the Tawau road from Tawau Airport to Semporna, also about 40 KM. This has been under construction for over six years. This also looks like taking another four years to complete.
Both these roads are directly funded by Federal but under PWD Sabah supervision.
In the peninsular these 40KM dual carriageway roads will take just twenty-four months or two years to complete. According to contractors, the delay is because of slow and minimal release of funds by the Works Ministry at Putra Jaya.
The reason is when Federal Government allocates funds for these ongoing road constructions, the Officer-in-charge is a Malayan Malay say from Johor. He will distribute ninety percent of the funds to the Peninsular states and only 10 per cent to Sabah and Sarawak or five percent each state. This has resulted in many contractors going bankrupt. To overcome this problem, Ministers from Sabah and Sarawak should at Cabinet meetings press for a distribution of at least 30pc for Sabah and Sarawak.
It was widely reported that whenever Federal funds are assigned under State control, it is more likely to be abused, then when left directly under Federal control.
In early 2017, RM6 billion of Federal funds – RM3 billion for water works and RM3 billion for rural development was widely reported to have gone missing.
A number of politicians and civil servants were arrested. So far that is all.
Therefore, for the interest of Sabahans, it is better development funds remain under Federal Control. The Edge paper should look carefully at these facts before suggesting that funds be under state control.
TEG
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