Skybridge woe due to mismanagement
Published on: Sunday, September 15, 2019
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I can say it is definitely not true that elected reps have “gone completely silent about it”. Chan Foong Hin, MP for Kota Kinabalu had issued multiple statements (on 10 June 2018, 2 September 2018, 8 September 2018, 18 April 2019, 15 June 2019, 22 July 2019, 23 August 2019) and I can see that the unfinished (not abandoned) skybridge is one of the things which is giving him a hard time ever since he was elected.
Chan has been going up and down government offices trying to resolve the issue, even speaking to Lim Guan Eng personally on the matter, and even had to be rebuked by the Minister as a bailout would lead to a bad precedent and lead to undue expectations by the public for government to solve abandoned projects caused by contractors’ liquidation in the future.
In his opinion, the writer bemoans: “Come on lah. Get serious. The Sky Bridge is 95pc complete. All Petrofiq Sdn Bhd wants is to be paid what is owed to them. For how long are they supposed to wait for their money huh?”.
The writer seems to have a bad case of selective memory. He recalls about politicians promising to resolve the issue prior to the last general elections if elected, but he had forgotten the most basic thing, and that is that the contract to build the skybridge is between Petrofiq Sdn Bhd and Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd (not the government!)
The writer had also failed miserably to mention that Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd has already been wound up after owing many creditors a lot of money. A liquidator, Mr. Augustine A/L T.K. James of Messrs. James & Co (based in Kuala Lumpur), had been appointed by an order of the High Court at Kuala Lumpur No. WA-28NCC-160-02/2018 dated 19 April 2018.
At this stage, it is important to emphasise that the government does not owe Petrofiq Sdn Bhd a single sen as there is no privity of contract between them.
Here, the government could easily take the writer’s suggestion to release the full contract sum of RM63,372,066.00 for the skybridge to the liquidator of Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd. However, this would NOT solve the issue as the sum is not enough to cover for the entirety of the debts that Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd had accumulated, which is over RM69 million according to the liquidator’s letter dated 10 December 2018 to UKAS.
If the writer is unaware of this, let this be clear: Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd also owes other creditors money for this skybridge project, including Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Berhad and Borneo Housing Mortgage Finance Berhad. In this case, the project contract has been assigned to the banks for a loan to finance the project, and the banks as such will be secured creditors – Petrofiq Sdn Bhd as unsecured creditors will only be left with crumbs.
However, the loan sum must have been misused elsewhere by Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd, and if not so, the company would have been able to pay Petrofiq Sdn Bhd.
Probably, whoever ran Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd had the same mentality that our former prime minister Najib Razak had when he diverted funds meant as refund of GST elsewhere. The writer ought to have trained his or her guns at Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd and/or their directors for their mismanagement and not the government.
The easiest way out is a bailout, i.e. the government pays both Sunsea and Petrofiq.
This seems to be what the writer wants when he took pains to push for the money to be paid, by hook or by crook.
In this regard, the writer seems to have a thinking no different from an Ah Long (illegal loan shark).
Ah Longs would splash red paint and resort to threats, even towards the borrower’s family members. Ah Longs don’t care about where the money comes from, they just want the money.
Similarly, here, as far as the writer is concerned, the government has to pay up even though it is Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd that cocked up.
This leads to an irresistible question: Is the writer related in any way to Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd? This is because in the event of a bailout, the biggest beneficiary is actually Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd who had allegedly already spent the loan amount meant for financing the skybridge project elsewhere and need not worry about paying Petrofiq and their loan with the banks.
To add salt to the wound, the writer had to mention the government’s approval of development projects worth over RM2billion (RM2.28 billion to be exact) for Sandakan as if Sandakan is not worthy of these developments. The writer ought to know that if there is a cock up of these projects, the government might be paying not just that amount, but perhaps double that amount, and we do not want to even go there.
There has to be a better way out, but bailing out is not the right way. There are better ways to spend the rakyat’s money than to pay for a contract sum twice. Personally, I would prefer that the directors of Sunsea Development Sdn Bhd be personally liable but, alas, they are protected by the corporate veil. We should probably lift it if some form of misconduct can be established.
One of the lessons to be learned here is that it is important for the government to appoint only contractors that are competent enough to be able to complete a project and not abandon them. It is important to end cronyism.
Don’t just give out projects just because the person is your friend. It is very easy to take loans from bank if you have a government contract to construct something, but not everyone has the discipline not to use that loan sum for other purposes.
John Wong Yu Ling
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