How bad planning derailed an RM800 million railway

 

Many readers might not know that Terengganu once had its own railways.

The first was built by the British-owned Eastern Metal and Mining Company immediately after the 2nd World War ended.

The line connected the iron mines of Bukit Besi, in the interior, to the coastal town of Dungun, 28 miles to the east.

In Dungun, the ores were loaded on waiting bulkers via a conveyor jetty, purposely built by the company in Dungun harbour.

A booming town

Dungun was then a booming town, boasting a population of about 65,000 and frequented often by mining workers and ship crew alike. The best entertainment and nightlife in Terengganu was to be found in Dungun.

The mining company also used to run free passenger coaches, powered by steam locomotives, to ferry their workers between Dungun and Bukit Besi, with several stations in between. The public also could ride in the carriages for free.

When the mine became exhausted in the early 1970s, the company offered to sell the railway, built on state land, to the Terengganu state government.

The plan was to turn it into a public service, with a possibility to expand the metre-gauge rail lines to other areas. But the state government refused the offer.

Eventually the entire railway line, wagons, coaches and mining equipment were all dismantled and sold for scrap.

That explains why there are hardly any remnants of the mine and the railway in Bukit Besi or Dungun today, save for a brick kiln and a furnace that were used to separate the ores. The mining staff quarters in Dungun, where the expatriate staff and managers used to live, have been turned into a university branch campus.

The open cast mining pools in Bukit Besi have been turned into a big lake for recreational purposes.

A newly built museum is all that is left, showcasing the pictures and documents of the past.

That mine closure marked a dark chapter for Dungun town and it has never recovered since.

Kerteh railway

In the mid-1990s, a plan was devised to connect the new oil town of Kerteh (45km south of Dungun) to Kuantan, the up and coming port serving the East Coast.

Kerteh was where Petronas landed their offshore crude oil and gas, via a network of undersea pipelines.

A metre-gauge railway line of 75km length was later built from Kerteh industrial complex, where Petronas runs a small refinery, to Kuantan port.

It was planned and built by Petronas at a cost of more than RM800 million. Work started in 1997 and completed in 2003.

The project consisted of a single-track railway, bridges, grade separated crossings, multi modal facilities, rolling stocks, rail yard, radio communications systems, signalling systems, maintenance workshop, equipment and buildings.

Petronas appointed Canadian consultants who were supported by a well-known local consultant based in Petaling Jaya.

Upon completion, several failures were reportedly detected. The civil works were reported to have been poorly designed, poorly built and poorly supervised, although there are those who claim that weather played a big part in the erosion process.

As a result, the railway suffered various operational problems, and had to be operated at much lower speed, well below the design speed.

The railway became under-utilised and bulk cargoes meant to be transported by rail reverted to road transport.

Kerteh railway, as it was called, started operation on 1st April 2004. (Yes, it’s true and this wasn’t an April Fool’s anecdote). It became apparent that the railway looked set to be closed. Eventually, on Nov 17, 2010, it was completely closed, lock, stock and barrel.

Inflated costs

The poor landowners in Terengganu (359 in total) were poorly compensated in the first place.

Not only did they lose their land and properties through compulsory acquisition by Petronas, but when the project was eventually abandoned, they were also overlooked and never given the chance to get their land back.

The railway was abandoned for nearly 10 years.

An afterthought was seen to be in play recently (2021), when certain sections were re-considered and demolished to make way for yet another railway infrastructure project, the infamous East Coast Rail Link.

This new single-track railway is another likely candidate to be a white elephant in Terengganu.

The wasted RM800 million spent by our oil giant was a tidy sum way back in the 1990s. Many schools or low-cost houses could have been built in Terengganu to alleviate poverty, but it was not meant to be.

Kerteh Railway was built at a cost of RM10.6 million per km back then. One wonders how much more the current ECRL per km would cost today.

Even if the current cost estimate were to triple the amount (RM31.8 million per km), a 665km single track rail line between Kelantan and KL should only cost about RM22 billion at the most.

Where did we go wrong in the allocation of public funds?

Indeed, we have gone through many expensive and costly lessons in dealing with railways. Sad to note, it was implemented with government funds and under government supervision. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.