By G. Sharmila
Tiger is a little amused over the fact that Sarawak State Infrastructure Development and Communication Minister Michael Manyin thinks that the RM16 billion allocated for the upgrading of the Pan-Borneo Highway is “chicken feed”. She thinks he should justify the need to spend more on an already-expensive project.
Tiger is generally rather sceptical towards highways, given that they usually cost a bomb to build and are usually not toll-free. She was pleasantly surprised when she heard that the Pan Borneo Highway in East Malaysia is going to be toll-free. However, that happiness was short-lived when she heard how much it was going to cost to upgrade: a whopping RM28 billion.
In Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s Budget 2016 speech, he said that the 1,096km-long Sarawak section of the Pan Borneo Highway will be completed in 2021 at a cost of RM16.1 billion, while the 706km-long Sabah section of the highway will cost RM12.1 billion.
That’s a lot of money to invest in the upgrading of the Pan Borneo Highway and one that is necessary to increase connectivity for East Malaysians. Tiger doesn’t dispute that. What Tiger wonders is how exactly the costs for highways such as the Pan Borneo Highway are calculated and whether the high costs are truly justified.
Tiger does wonder, especially after Sarawak State Infrastructure Development and Communication Minister Michael Manyin told The Borneo Post last Wednesday that the RM16.1 billion is “chicken feed”.
He claimed that for the quality of highways in KL, the cost per km should be a minimum RM20 million to RM30 million per km. (To put this within context, the Pan Borneo Highway costs around RM14.6 million per km for the 1,096km-long Sarawak stretch of the highway.)
He also said that to tailor the implementation of the project to the limited budget, some stretches of the highway would have to remain two lanes instead of the planned four-lane road. Citing an example, he said one stretch that would be two lanes is the 33km Sematan-Teluk Melano road at the southern tip of Sarawak.
What Tiger would like to ask the minister is how he arrived at such a calculation and if he can prove that the RM16 billion allocation is insufficient for ensuring a high-quality, well-constructed highway. He did not provide reasons or justifications for his RM20 million to RM30 million estimates, which has left Tiger surmising that he is just another disgruntled politician shooting from the hip.
If he can prove that the RM16 billion is insufficient for the highway project, then perhaps the federal government should, in fact, listen to him and do the necessary reallocation for the project. But Tiger is not going to hold her breath for this, seeing that the federal government has said that it is not going to revise its Budget for next year.
In Tiger’s opinion, there are worse highways to complain about. A thorn that still rankles in Tiger’s side is the Kinrara-Damansara Expressway (Kidex), a 14.9km, fully elevated highway project estimated to cost RM2.2 billion. That highway project, which has since been shelved, would have cost RM148 million per km to build.
The cost for Kidex was astronomical compared to the older 7.7km, fully elevated Ampang-KL Elevated Highway completed in 2001, which cost RM98 million per km to construct. Kidex would have cost nearly 50% more per km compared to Akleh if the project had received the green light.
Back to the Pan Borneo Highway, RM14.6 million per km does seem like a paltry sum if you compare the construction costs of highways like the Kidex. But maybe, just maybe, the federal government has done its calculations right and therefore the Pan-Borneo Highway costs as much as it should.
If that is indeed true, Tiger believes that since the highway involves public funds, the federal government should publish its analysis of the highway costs and how it arrived at RM16 billion in the first place. It’s time the government was transparent on the costs of its highway projects and it can start with the Pan Borneo project.
It should take a leaf out of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) book when it comes to transparency surrounding information on highway projects. The ADB has done that with the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation Road Connectivity Project, where it has a page on what are the documents pertaining to the project. More can be viewed here.
In any case, Tiger thinks that Manyin should seriously do some number crunching and make those calculations public to prove that the federal government should invest more in the highway project, or else hold his tongue on the matter.
At the end of the day it’s about making sure the public funds are well spent and that every sen is accounted for, isn’t it?
GRRRRR!!!
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