PENANG, May 9 — The DAP is demanding Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat quit the Cabinet over the latest delay in releasing a report on the scandal-hit Port Klang Free Zone, said to have ballooned from RM1.8 billion to RM12 billion in cost. The Transport Minister had vowed the report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) would be made public last Wednesday but Port Klang Authority (PKA) chairman Datuk Lee Hwa Beng said it would be delayed as it needs further consent for the report release.
"Malaysians want Ong and Lee to know that they do not buy their latest excuses why the PwC report cannot be made public, and the Cabinet next Wednesday should just tell Ong to resign as Transport Minister if he cannot honour his pledge to 'tell all' and immediately release the PwC report on the PKFZ scandal," the DAP leader said at a fund-raising dinner here last night.
He claimed Ong had repeatedly broken his pledge and one deadline after another to release the report, saying "Ong is back playing the game of passing the buck" with the latest deadline again broken.
He said the Cabinet and public should not brook further delays and excuses as the scandal was shaping up as among the biggest Barisan Nasional financial scandals in the country's history.
He said many were sceptical when business weekly The Edge reported last month the total PKFZ bill was RM8 billion but latest media reports say "the frightening figure of the final cost of the PKFZ scandal could be a whopping RM12 billion or 6.5 times the original cost of RM1.8 billion".
He blasted the price tag, noting "the Cabinet was told when it first approved the project that it would not involve a single sen of taxpayers’ monies!"
The project has already cost the political career of former MCA deputy president Tan Sri Chan Kong Choy who was dropped in Election 2008.
The 405ha PKFZ transhipment hub, which has warehouses, office blocks and a four-star hotel, has been dogged by controversy ever since it was revealed that its original development cost had ballooned from less than RM2.5 billion to up to RM4.6 billion.
There were also questions about the possible kickbacks after it was disclosed that several individuals acquired the piece of land where the PKFZ now sits at RM3 per sq ft in 1999. The PKA later acquired the land at RM25psf.
PKFZ ran into further problems when the management company Jebel Ali Free Zone International terminated its contract in 2007.
1 comment:
Hahaha... What Kit Xiang is trying to say is that HIS son too should resign as Chief Minister for DELAYING the naming of the Penang Deputy Chief Minister after promising to name him much earlier. The present CM should also be held accountable for the present Land Fiasco in Penang? Is this what you are trying to say Yb Kit Xiang?
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