China should not be involved in managing ECRL, says Najib

Former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak has criticised the stipulation in the renegotiated East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) deal for the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) to form a joint venture with Malaysia Rail Link (MRL).

“The suggestion for the Chinese side to be involved in the management of the ECRL is not reasonable because this is a form of domestic transportation in our country, and Malaysian citizens have the capability to handle the entire railway system, and that is why we have trained our workers before this,” Najib said.

He was speaking to reporters outside the Kuala Lumpur High Court today after attending today’s proceedings in relation to the SRC International Sdn Bhd corruption trial.

One of the key points in the renegotiated ECRL deal is that CCCC agrees to form a 50 percent joint venture with MRL to operate and maintain the project. This means that the Chinese company would bear 50 percent of the risk, should the project run into trouble.

Najib said this stipulation could affect national security, because “national secrets would be made known to outsiders”.

Instead, he suggested, the main contractor should be from Malaysia, while CCCC could provide technical advice to the Malaysian company.

While he welcomed the government’s decision to continue with the ECRL, he said that the reduced construction cost of RM44 billion only involved cutting down the number of stations and eliminating the construction of the tunnel across the Titiwangsa range.

Najib added that this showed that claims about the ECRL’s true cost being RM29 billion, and that the remaining RM26 billion was to be used to bail out 1MDB were untrue.

Last Friday, it was announced that the government would continue with the ECRL project at a reduced cost of RM44 billion.

The project was initially estimated by the BN government to cost RM55 billion.

However, after Pakatan Harapan took over the federal government following the 14th general election, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng had said that the final cost of the project is RM81 billion.  - Mkini