Former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak has hit back at the DAP for questioning his decision to favour Boustead Naval Shipyard Sdn Bhd (BNS) to build littoral combat ships (LCS) for the navy.
“It’s because BNS belongs to the Armed Forces Pension Fund (LTAT), which belongs to every Malaysian military personnel.
“And I accept that LTAT is my ‘crony’ as our military and the rakyat are my ‘cronies’,” he said, in a Facebook post.
Earlier today, DAP publicity secretary Teo Nie Ching urged Najib to explain why he, in his capacity as then finance minister, resorted to giving favourable treatment to the main contractors (BNS) for the project.
Citing an example, the DAP leader said late delivery charges for each LCS were capped at RM180 million.
Teo said the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) noted that the government was entitled to claim liquidated ascertained damages (LAD) of RM116.54 million by Dec 31, 2019, because the delivery of the first LCS was already 245 days late.
By extrapolating this number to July 31, the Kulai MP said that the LAD would be as high as RM582.12 million.
Hurling brickbats at Teo, Najib said that he decided to favour BNS as he wanted Malaysia to have its own expertise and hardware to build and maintain local battleships without depending too much on foreign expertise to solidify national defences.
‘If not LTAT, then who?’
“Besides, I wanted LTAT to reap good profits so that it could offer dividends and bonuses as high as 10 percent to its contributors unlike the paltry rate between 2 percent and 3 percent disbursed during Pakatan Harapan’s time.
“And BNS is the only company in Malaysia that has its own dockyard fully equipped to acquire, build and surrender such ships to the Royal Malaysia Navy.
“So if not LTAT, who do we give the project to? Vincent Tan? The company involved in Penang undersea tunnel project or purchase it straight from other countries?” he asked.
Apart from the reasons above, the Pekan MP said he wanted local talents to get jobs in the process, with local suppliers getting business opportunities and diversifying the nation’s capabilities.
“As what the LTAT CEO said yesterday, the LCS project created many technical and engineering jobs for close to 3,000 people.
“Four hundred local vendors across various sectors also benefited from it, and this is excluding the thousands of jobs created in the vendor companies themselves,” he said.
On that note, Najib insisted that the previous Harapan government was also to blame for the fiasco, claiming the project got delayed during their time.
‘Harapan messed up too’
“I want to ask the DAP. Why did the LCS project progress go up by only between 3 percent and 4 percent during their administration when it was at 53 percent between 2015 and May 2018 under BN?
“Can Harapan admit they had delayed its progress and had frozen it? What steps did they take to speed up the progress so that the first ship could be delivered in April 2019 as per your own timeline?
“And can someone tell me why Harapan didn’t make noise when the first ship was not delivered in April 2019 but only harping on it now,” Najib asked.
Earlier today, The Vibes reported LTAT CEO Ahmad Nazim Abdul Rahman as saying that the LCS project was halted in 2019 due to several factors but was revived in April this year based on the cheapest option.
“The cabinet committee took eight months to go through the three options presented, which included the restructuring of BNS.
“The LCS project has opened up job opportunities for 3,000 engineers and more than RM4 billion worth of work for over 400 local vendors,” he added. - Mkini
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