Reopening tender shows Wee agrees Liow-approved project overpriced - Loke
Reopening the tender for the Klang Valley Double Tracking (Phase 2) (KVDT 2) project shows that Transport Minister Wee Ka Siong agrees the project approved by his predecessor Liow Tiong Lai was overpriced, said another former minister.
Former transport minister Anthony Loke also claimed that some of the facts presented by Wee yesterday were misleading.
Reopening the tender for the Klang Valley Double Tracking (Phase 2) (KVDT 2) project shows that Transport Minister Wee Ka Siong agrees the project approved by his predecessor Liow Tiong Lai was overpriced, said another former minister.
Former transport minister Anthony Loke also claimed that some of the facts presented by Wee yesterday were misleading.
In a 2am statement, Loke said Wee should be asking questions to Liow about the KVDT 2's original RM5.265 billion price tag.
"The question Wee should be asking is why his friend, Liow who was MCA president and transport minister when this project was approved, did not get a third party valuation before awarding the contract to Dhaya Maju-LTAT (DM-LTAT) for RM5.26 billion just a day before Parliament was dissolved on April 4, 2018.
"The conclusion is that the MCA transport minister has cancelled the KVDT 2 project approved by the former MCA transport minister because the (current) minister agrees that the original cost approved by the former minister is too high," Loke said.
Wee in a statement yesterday evening said the Perikatan Nasional (PN) cabinet had agreed to reopen the tender for KVDT 2, after finding that continuing with the project based on direct tender was untenable.
He said the project was still overpriced despite the Pakatan Harapan government cutting down the cost to RM4.475 billion.
He cited a valuation by Khazanah subsidiary Opus Consultants in October 2018, that estimated the project's actual cost was RM3.398 billion based on DM-LTAT's original scope of work.
Wee said this valuation was not made available to the cabinet at the time.
Loke took offence at this and offered some clarifications.
He said that the cabinet had not hired Opus Consultants and that their voluntary valuation was not a complete or official report as it was only based on what is publicly known about KVDT 2.
He added that on Sept 19, 2018, he had informed the cabinet that a third party valuation had estimated the project to cost between RM3 billion and RM3.5 billion if retendered.
This, Loke said, was why the cabinet decided to terminate the letter of award to DM-LTAT.
He said Wee could check the cabinet meeting minutes to confirm this, and that the latter should apologise to him for making "baseless accusations".
The chronology of events shown by Wee yesterday backs Harapan's claim that it had attempted to terminate the award of the contract and retender it through open tender but backtracked after DM-LTAT appealed in order to avoid a lawsuit.
It also showed that the PN administration had conducted investigations on the project since it took over the government in March, leading to the current decision to cancel the KVDT 2 project to retender it.
Wee said an independent checking consultant would be appointed before a new contractor is selected via open tender for the project, in order to shorten the project's construction period from seven years to five.
The KVDT 2 project re-entered the spotlight after Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz earlier this week released a list of direct negotiation awards purportedly given under the Harapan administration.
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