Negotiating to use portion of road tax revenue for repairing federal roads - Fadillah

Negotiations are underway to set aside a portion of the road tax revenue into a special allocation to repair Federal roads nationwide, said Works Minister Fadillah Yusof.

Fadillah, who is also senior minister of infrastructure said this is one of the proposals put forward in negotiations with the Transport Ministry to resolve the problem caused by overloaded vehicles.

He said to date, proceeds from the road tax have been put into the consolidation fund under the Finance Ministry for development purposes including for the maintenance of Federal roads provided through the government’s operating budget.

“However, the existing provisions for road maintenance received from the consolidation fund is not enough.

“The Works Ministry, therefore, recommends that certain percentage of road tax be put into the trust account for road maintenance purposes,” he told Bernama.

The proposal was raised at a press conference after he presented the Completion Contractor Certificates to 39 recipients today.

At the event, he also witnessed the ‘I promise Zero Potholes’ which is a Public Works Department (PWD) initiative and six concessionaire companies for Federal roads to further strengthen the ministry's commitment on the delivery of road maintenance services.

Fadillah said it is difficult to ascertain who was responsible for the damage caused by these vehicles, in contrast to damage caused by utility repair works.

“If it is due to the work of utilities they have to pay a deposit to PWD, we will either recover from the deposit or until the contractor repairs the damage done and adheres to the standards, PWD will be happy to return the deposit.

“But apart from utilities, it is a bit difficult for us to identify the source which caused the damage, whether it is a lorry or what, this is a very complicated matter in terms of making claims,” he said.

He said through the ‘zero potholes’ programme launched since 2016, he was committed to resolving the problem of potholes within 24 hours of discovering it or receiving complaints about temporary repairs, or within three days for permanent repairs.

In another development, he said the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) Technical Committee had held a recent three-day meeting and concluded several matters concerning Sarawak and Petronas’ collaboration.

These include, among others, the party responsible for exploration and leading oil and gas search operations on and off the coast of Sarawak, he said.

- Bernama