Consortium Zenith Sdn Bhd today denied using the name of Works Minister Fadillah Yusof to justify the supposed overpayment it received for the Feasibility Studies and Detailed Design (FSDD) for the Penang undersea tunnel and three main road projects in the state.

Its chairperson Zarul Ahmad Zulkifly, in a statement, said that checks with his consultants revealed that the discussion on the high fees had indeed taken place during the meeting with Fadillah on April 6.

He was responding to Fadillah who had yesterday expressed regret over Zenith using his name and his ministry's to justify the bloated payment received for the FSDD.

Fadillah had said that he had pointed out to Zarul on several occasions that the total FSDD fees for the project were excessive and said that the April 6 meeting was only a briefing for the ministry of the project's overview and not about the detailed cost of the project.

To this, Zarul asked: "Wouldn’t it be odd that we came to your ministry to talk about the delay of feasibility studies of the undersea tunnel without discussing the fee that you have alleged to be excessive?”

He reiterated that Zenith won the project in an open tender exercise and the calculation of RM41 million by Board of Engineers Malaysia only covers civil and structural works.

“Some of the projects’ scope of works such as the double-decked elevated highway and land tunnel are highly technical,” he added.

Zarul, who is also an Umno member, said Zenith had to engage foreign consultants for these specialist studies because it does not have local specialists to undertake the task, and that the former's fees are hard to be benchmarked as existing professional institutions in Malaysia do not have the standard scale of fees for such consultants.

“Therefore, their fees had to be benchmarked against international standard fees,” he added.

Zarul reiterated his plan to meet up with the federal Board of Engineers Malaysia, expressing hope that Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Abdul Rahman Dahlan, who had also voiced out against the high fees issue, would join him in the meeting.