21 March 2012
DAP has slammed the Transport Ministry for being evasive over the escalating costs involving the upcoming low-cost terminal klia2.
Repeating his call for heads to roll over the project’s purported RM2.2 billion cost overruns, Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua was not impressed with minister Kong Cho Ha’s apparent evasion to meet with him on the matter.
Pua claimed that Kong was supposed to meet with him and Lembah Pantai MP (PKR) Nurul Izzah Anwar this morning, to no avail.
“Kong had scheduled for a dialogue with Nurul and myself this morning at the Ministry of Transport. Unfortunately, the meeting was postponed at the last minute as the minister had to attend an urgent function in Taiping,” he said in a press statement.
Pua also did not seem impressed with Kong’s curt written reply over the former’s query on why klia2 had been moved from its original northern site to a western location.
In a Parliamentary response, Kong merely said: “The decision (to do so)?as based on the KLIA Blueprint which was finished in December 2008.”
The minister added that earthworks at KLIA West cost about RM773.38 million and that construction of the new control tower at klia2 cost about RM40.95 million.
In a previous FMT report, Pua had asked why klia2 costs had doubled from an initial RM1.7 billion to RM3.9 billion.
He had also asked why Malaysian Airports Holding Bhd had chosen to move klia2 to its current western site, when it was directly above a peat swamp.
Additional changes including a second control tower (RM300 million), third runway (RM270 million), adding seven storeys to one of the terminal’s buildings (RM420 million) caused the airport’s costs to jump.
Initially slated for a June 2012 deadline, the project’s completion has now been delayed to 2013.
Today, Pua claimed that costs were expected to soar further, adding that this was because of the additional control tower and earthworks.
“The additional control tower which has to be built because the existing control tower cannot see the planes at the KLIA West site, has been shifted again at the request of the Department of Civil Aviation because the new site could not have full view of the airport.
“…earthworks on the site has found certain parts of the peat swamp (to) contain more water than had been anticipated,” he said.
Source: www.freemalaysiatoday.com
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