PARLIAMENT The government has extended the maintenance contract worth about RM272 million for the two Scorpene submarines, Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.

He revealed that the renewal of the contract for both submarines stands at RM110.95 million and RM161.22 million respectively.

The contract, which expired on Nov 30, 2015, has now been extended to May 2017, Hishammuddin said in a parliamentary reply yesterday.

He added that the total costs for six years' maintenance amounted to RM1.39 billion, before the contract expired last year.

As such, the accumulated costs for both KD Tunku Abdul Rahman and KD Tun Razak have reached a whopping RM1.7 billion.

Boustead DCNS Naval Corporation Sdn Bhd was appointed to provide maintenance service for both the Scorpene submarines.

The chairperson of Boustead is Lodin Wok Kamarudin, who also chairs 1MDB, which is controlled by Finance Minister and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.

Hishammuddin was responding to Wan Hasan Mohd Ramli (BN-Dungun) who asked the strength of Scorpene, its maintenance cost and if the submarines have been tasked with searching for the missing Flight MH370.

On this, the minister ( photo ) said the submarines served as a force multiplier-asset for the navy, which has multitask functions such as monitoring, surveillance and intelligence gathering through invisible methods.

He said the submarines are capable of breaking an enemy's attack by using torpedoes and other weapons.

They also acted as the gatekeeper along the the passageway of shop as they are able to launch an attack when facing a threat, Hishammuddin said.

However, he added, the Scorpenes were not assigned to search and rescue the missing MH370 as they are not equipped with the specific sonar that enables them to identify undersea objects.