An opposition MP has maintained that the government chose the wrong incinerator technology, leading  to escalated costs despite a minster’s explanation.

DAP MP Ong Kian Ming said that the unproven technology caused construction delays for four incinerators in the tourist spots of Cameron Highlands, Pangkor, Tioman and Langkawi.

More than that, the operation costs of each incinerator - ranging from RM207-363 per tonne of solid waste - was also twice over that of the landfill waste disposal method adopted for  Kuala Lumpur, he said.

Ong ( left ) was responding to Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister Abdul Rahman Dahlan who had denied that the long-delayed incinerators had anything to do with the lack of expertise or scale of operations.

"One cannot help but draw the conclusion that the high operation cost per tonne for these incinerators is not only due to the lack of economies of scale but also because of the unproven technology that is being used," Ong, the MP for Serdang, said in a statement.

He also questioned why the ministry has abandoned a fifth such incinerator planned for Labuan, if its technology was so good.

The ministry had said that the new locally conceived technology, dubbed the Rotary Incinerator kiln, was the brainchild of XCNT Sdn Bhd and is theoretically proven and approved by a panel of experts. Ong argued instead that XCNT was inexperienced in such matters.

Another weakness of the XCNT’s  incinerators was that it only had two operational lines compared to those in Singapore, for example, which could run six line simultaneously, Ong said.

H also noted that the auditor-general's 2013 report had also said that the plants were not working as promised.

XCNT had claimed that the incinerators could reduce the final output (bottom ash) to 6 percent of the initial volume.

The auditor-general's report, however, said that in practice 19-33 percent of the waste was left undestroyed.