Wee slams Loke for using ECRL as campaign promise

 

Wee Ka Siong, transport minister in the outgoing government, said billions of ringgit of losses were caused by the cancellation of the project.

PETALING JAYA: Former transport minister Loke Siew Fook came under fire today from his successor Wee Ka Siong for promising voters that the East Coast Rail Link would not be cancelled should Pakatan Harapan form the new government after tomorrow’s parliamentary elections.

Wee said PH had once halted the project when it came to power in 2018, which had led to losses running in billions of ringgit.

Wee, who is MCA president, also criticised Loke’s party. “It is really typical of DAP to promise something that was already established by Barisan Nasional,” he said. “BN had come in and restarted the project in April last year after we resolved all outstanding issues.”

Loke is secretary-general of DAP.

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Wee asked why Loke was using rhetoric about ECRL during the election campaign when he knew that certain segments of the line had to be downsized.

“Why doesn’t Loke also speak about the variation costs and abandonment costs for changing the alignment? Or the fact that PH changed the project from a double-tracked formation to a single-tracked one as part of their ‘cost-savings’ of some RM10 billion.”

He added that Loke had continued to wrongfully claim that the northern alignment of the project, favoured by the BN government, would have incurred higher costs.

“The cost of the improved northern alignment during my tenure is being kept at RM50.27 billion after negotiations with contractors,” he said.

The 665km ECRL will traverse Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, and Selangor and be a land bridge between Kuantan Port and Port Klang, with the potential of allowing ships to bypass Singapore.

Construction began in August 2017 but work was suspended following the change of government in 2018 and was resumed in 2019. - FMT