The transport ministry plans to bring back into service retired monorail trains in order to meet the increased passenger capacity, its minister said today.
Anthony Loke said his ministry has received plenty of complaints regarding the overcrowded monorail line and hopes that the problem can be solved repairing old monorail sets and putting them back into service.
"Now we only have five two-car monorail sets and each can only carry 200 passengers per load which is not enough for now, especially during the peak hours.
"Actually we do have five four-car sets that were in operation since 2016 but there have been eight accidents involving their components since then.
"A decision was then taken in January to retire all these train sets," he told reporters after his visit to the KL Monorail depot in the capital.
According to Loke, the five monorail train sets were purchased from Malaysia's own Scomi Group.
Loke said Prasarana's RM494 million contract with Scomi was for 12 monorail train sets and also for the upgrading of the stations but the government has to date only received five train sets with seven more still pending.
However, the seven pending train sets were not urgent and he said he would want to solve the defects plaguing the five retired train sets first.
"So I have discussed with Prasarana and Spad, to find the solution to this.
We got the train sets but we can't use them. I want to solve this as fast as possible," said Loke.
"I will have a meeting together with Prasarana and Scomi and I will ask Scomi to present a proposal regarding their solutions. The problems between Prasarana and Scomi will also be discussed.
"The other option is for Prasarana to terminate the contract with Scomi and to have an open tender to look for a replacement as there is one foreign company interested. This is the second option."
The minister said all possible outcomes would be tabled to the cabinet for a decision and hopefully, the five repaired train sets could be in service by early next year. - Mkini
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