Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak announced today that concession agreements for three tolled highways will be restructured to reduce the burden of the people.

azlan “There will be no increase in toll rates for the next five years for the Kuala Lumpur-Karak Highway and the Phase 1 of the East Coast Highway,” said Najib, adding that both tolled roads are to be taken over by two corporate figures.

The prime minister explained that the unnamed corporate personalities had proposed a solution “which will be a big impact on the people”.

Najib said that they had offered to buy over the assets of the said highway concessionaires.

“I have also been asked to not prolong the concession period and no compensation will not be borne by the government when a review of the suspended toll rate is done,” he said.

End to toll for East-West Link Highway

The announcement also included the early end of toll collection of on the East-West Link Highway which connects Salak intersection and Taman Connaught intersection.

azlan “This is an early closure as the period (of the toll collection) is up to 2018,” he said.

However, it will only expected to be implemented in May as the government has yet to complete the documentation process.  

According to the premier, the closure of the toll seven years earlier than plan will benefit some 39 million road users who frequently use the East-West link highway.

Asked whether such mechanisms will be used to ease the users of the North-South Expressway (Plus), Najib simply said:

“One by one lah... there are more announcement but all in good time.”

He appealed to other highway concessionaires to emulate this move and said that the government was in the midst of negotiating with them.

'There should be no backdoor compensation'

In an immediate reaction, PKR deputy president Azmin Ali welcome Najib’s announcement, which he said was one of Pakatan Rakyat’s promises.

He said that there should not be any form of backdoor compensation to the concessionaires, “not in any form of formal payment or informal awarding of other projects to compensate for the toll freeze/abolishment”.

“Any decision of that could have created financial impacts to the public purse such as this should have been brought and discussed in Dewan Rakyat; not unilaterally decided by the prime minister.”

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