Works Minister S Samy Vellu's response that the controversial alignment of the Penang Outer Ring Road project should be amended to avoid disruption to residential areas and cemeteries has been viewed with mixed feelings by the opposition.

Keadilan Penang deputy chairperson Cheah Kah Peng said he feared that the statement issued by the minister in Penang yesterday was "just another make-belief show" put up by the government.

Urging the public to scrutinise the amendments carefully, Cheah said he hoped that the changes would not only be cosmetic to appease Penangites and the opposition.

"There must be real amendments on the PORR alignment in order to solve environmental, ecological, economical, cultural and residential problems faced by the people.

"This is because issues arising from PORR have drawn immense anguish and outcry from Penangites over the past few weeks," he said in press statement today.

Yesterday, the northern edition of The Star reported that Samy said he had instructed the concessionaire, Peninsular Metro-Works Sdn Bhd, to amend parts of the proposed 17km highway to avoid disruption to residential areas and cemeteries.

At a press conference after officiating the Penang Bridge Run, Samy told reporters that he has given the company two weeks to submit the new plan to his department.

However, the minister dismissed the idea of a new bidder for the RM1.02 billion project, claiming that the new companies will only demand for "more money".

Open tender call

In an immediate response, Cheah said that Samy has "completely missed the point" when he totally disregarded the need for an open tender in public-funded projects like PORR.

"It is unprincipled and appalling for a minister like Samy to automatically reject the call for a new open tender. The obscurity in various areas of this project has shown that the Barisan Nasional government is seriously lacking in areas of accountability and transparency," he stressed.

However, Cheah conceded that while Samy's response, misguided though it may be, came a little too late, "it is better late than never and something is better than nothing".

"This is of course better in comparison with Penang Chief Minister Dr Koh Tsu Koon's response and his colleagues in the state government who have all washed their hands off this controversy by saying that it is a federal government project," he said.

Cheah had criticised Koh in an earlier report, saying that the state leader cannot just wash his hands off the whole thing. "Even if the Martians come and build a project here, he cannot say it is a Martian project [and leave it at that]."

'Special favour'

Meanwhile, DAP national chairperson Lim Kit Siang criticised the state government for reducing itself into an agent or servant of the project developer by "preparing to surrender vacant possession" of six parcels of 31ha of prime land to PMW even before the signing of the concession.

"In the case of Jelutong Expressway (a coastal project which is currently underway in the island), the concessionaire had to bear its own cost of squatter compensation. Why this special favour for PMW?" queried Lim, in a press statement today.

Other than asking the federal government to reconsider the road project, Lim urged the state government to freeze all preparations to surrender the vacant land to PMW.

He concurred with Cheah that a rebidding of the project was necessary in line with international practices of good urban governance and public integrity, something which he said Koh should be familiar with as the state leader had opened countless such conferences and forums.

Initiated by the works ministry, the project, which is expected to hit more than 176 structures, has come under fire for its ambiguity in areas like how the tender was awarded, compensation rates for affected property owners, toll rates and feasibility of the highway in solving Penang's long-standing traffic woes.

Penangites have been told that the state government had taken measures to keep the PORR toll low and reasonable, reducing the originally proposed toll by 41 percent from RM1.70 per toll station to RM1.

However, this 'discount' was obtained from PMW in exchange for RM150 million federal allocation for the compensation scheme, 31ha of prime state land worth RM200 million and the right to reclaim 200ha of land worth RM3 billion on the sea front off Gurney Drive.

The lack of transparency in how this 'barter' was calculated to be equal also made public hackles rise.