Cabinet ministers are in the dark over the claimed termination of the China Communications and Construction Company (CCCC) as the contractor for the controversial East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project.
Three ministers who spoke to Malaysiakini said the matter was not raised at the cabinet meeting last week.
"This was never raised (in the cabinet)," said a minister, adding the next cabinet meeting will be held tomorrow.
Another minister said: "Not that I am aware of."
“The cabinet had not discussed the matter and no decision was made on terminating CCCC's contract," said the third minister.
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, whose ministry is leading negotiations with China on the status of the ECRL project, did not respond to requests for comment.
Last Friday, The Edge Markets, citing a source, said the government had terminated CCCC's engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning contract for the RM81 billion ECRL project.
Yesterday, Singapore's The Straits Times, citing a source, also said that the Malaysian government was seeking a new contractor for the project.
This comes as a surprise as Putrajaya had previously said it was “stuck' with the project due to the high compensation to be paid to CCCC if it terminated the project.
More clarity
Prime Minister Dr Mahathit Mohamad had indicated that his preference was to terminate the project, but was willing to defer or downsize it if the country could get out of paying the hefty compensation due.
It is unclear if claims that CCCC had been terminated were a negotiating gambit, or whether Putrajaya had struck a new deal with Beijing.
The Straits Times had said that Putrajaya wanted the maximum cost of the ECRL to be capped at RM40 billion, as well as using more local materials, but CCCC was unable to meet those conditions.
More clarity is expected when this week's cabinet meeting takes place tomorrow.
Previously, the Finance Ministry had announced the termination of MMC- Gamuda as contractors for the underground portion of the MRT2 project, in an apparent attempt to press the consortium into lowering the cost of the project.
Two weeks later, the Finance Ministry announced that the cabinet had accepted a new offer from MMC-Gamuda to reduce the cost of the project's underground works by 21.5 percent to RM13.11 billion.
The ECRL project has been plagued with controversy over claims that the previous BN government had initiated the project at an inflated cost so as to divert funds to cover alleged misappropriated monies at 1MDB. -Mkini
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