27 March 2015
Tony Pua wants the Transport and Finance Ministers to stop pussyfooting around the scandal.
Liow Tiong Lai has been described as a typical “no action, talk only” Barisan Nasional (BN) Minister by DAP’s Tony Pua, because up until today, more than four months later, no directive has been given to the Auditor-General (A-G) to carry out investigations on the discrepancies and anomalies at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (klia2).
Pua, the MP for Petaling Jaya Utara, called upon both the Transport and Finance Ministers to stop pussyfooting around the scandal and start by issuing the directive to the A-G during the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday next week.
“I had asked in Parliament on 25 March 2015 when the Government was going to direct the A-G to carry out the above exercise,” said Pua who is also his party’s National Publicity Secretary.
The reply, interestingly from the Minister of Finance, added Pua, was that “the Ministry of Finance together with the Transport Ministry and the A-G’s Department were still studying the various issues which were raised by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and will present a paper for the consideration of the Cabinet”.
“The answer is not only disappointing; it is an affront to the role of the PAC,” said Pua. “The bipartisan members of the PAC had taken great pains to hold multiple meetings with all relevant parties and even site visits to klia2 before concluding its report.
“If even the recommendation for the A-G to conduct a detailed audit of the project requires another ‘paper’ for the consideration of the Cabinet, it shows that the Executive arm of the Government has utter contempt for the Parliamentary institution.”
He pointed out that it has already been more than four months since the PAC report was tabled.
How long does the Ministry of Finance and Transport need to take to study the report?
Is the Cabinet hoping that if the “study” by the two Ministries takes forever to complete and the instructions never get issued to the A-G, then the culprits behind the RM4 billion klia2 scandal will be able to escape scott free, Pua asked.
“The inability of the Minister of Transport to take responsibility for his own Ministry proves only the well-known fact that Liow was perhaps only a Minister in name,” said Pua. “He has no major decision making powers over his Ministry, to the extent that even the conduct of an audit by the A-G somehow now requires the permission of the Minister of Finance, who also happens to be the Prime Minister.”
The decision to locate klia2 at KLIA West costly and ill-suited
The PAC, which conducted its investigations on the RM4 billion ringgit klia2 scandal, had found many suspicious and controversial decisions by Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd. These decisions had resulted in not only an airport costing more than double the original budget of RM1.7 billion but was delayed completion multiple times.
The Report found that the design of the airport had compromised Malaysia’s competitive advantage to serve and grow the low-cost carrier industry.
Other findings included the decisions to locate klia2 at KLIA West, a site which was documented by engineers as costly and ill-suited for airport construction; and the poor choice of a satellite-type terminal instead of a finger pier terminal as proposed by the airport consultants.
Original Source: www.freemalaysiatoday.com
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