KUALA LUMPUR: The Bangsar-Damansara Elevated Highway, partly funded by Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL), was started before the Pakatan Harapan government took over Putrajaya, said Federal Territories Minister Khalid Abdul Samad.
Therefore, he said, there might be legal implications if the project were to be cancelled, even though no open tender was called for in 2017.
“It was signed before the general election. We have to accept the reality that the new government has to continue with the commitment made by the previous government,” he told reporters.
Earlier, Khalid officiated the PLANMalaysia-level Federal Territories Day Celebration. PLANMalaysia refers to Town and Country Planning offices, with each state having its own.
Khalid said the project would continue so as to avoid legal implications, noting a similar problem with the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project that the federal government had faced and the hefty compensation that would have to be paid.
“We cannot go to Najib Razak and ask him to pay. What we can do is to discuss ways to reduce the impact,” he added.
He was asked to comment on the call by two PH MPs to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate the highway project which had been objected to by several residents’ groups.
Segambut MP Hannah Yeoh and Lembah Pantai MP Fahmi Fadzil had also asked why DBKL was funding RM100 million, almost half the cost of the RM211.5 million project.
The three-lane carriageway will stretch from Jalan Semantan in Damansara to the junction of Sprint Highway with Jalan Maarof in Bangsar.
Authorities said it would shorten the journey from Bangsar to Pusat Bandar Damansara, but residents said it would only make traffic congestion in the area worse.
In early 2018, then-federal territories minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said the project was scheduled for completion in June 2020.- FMT
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