Works Ministry determined to avoid overpriced tenders
KUALA LUMPUR: Works Minister Baru Bian said he would ensure future government projects and procurements are supervised to stop the past practice of overpriced tenders and contracts.
“I would advocate for open tender as it is competitive and fair,” he told Bernama in an interview.
He said for this to happen, the ministry would work with other ministries and agencies to ensure due process was carried out.
He said there was some truth to the public’s perception that previously, the ministry, despite having experts like engineers and quantity surveyors, was not fully involved in the process of determining the price of mega projects, thus leading to their inflated costs.
“The ministry will provide our technical expertise throughout the assessment process to predetermine the value of tenders.”
He said his ministry had little input for projects implemented under a public-private sector partnership, but he would be pushing for open tender.
Exemption would be given to procurements involving national security and time-sensitive projects, like during emergencies, such as floods, where work was limited to certain people and prices were fixed, he said.
“Due to that, you need to give it (the project) to certain contractors because of the nature of the project.
“But the selection of the tender method is subject to the government’s policies, especially the finance minister, and the amount of funds available.
“Once they are fair, once they are controlled and transparent, I think we should be confident that future contracts will not be decided by ‘certain people’, but will be open and competitive.”
At a meeting with 200 senior officers of the Public Works Department (PWD) in Alor Star, Kedah, recently, he said PWD spent about RM100 billion annually on procurements through projects and tenders.
To ensure public funds are spent prudently, he pledged to use open tender transparently, especially for mega projects, to prevent wastage.
In the interview, he agreed with public perception that despite Malaysia having first-world infrastructure and public amenities, their quality of maintenance was of third-world standard due to budget constraints.
For example, he said, RM2 billion was needed to maintain federal roads and other infrastructure under his ministry annually, but the ministry’s budget was between RM600 million and RM800 million, not even close to 50 per cent of the budget needed.
“Because of this, about 30 per cent of federal roads are in poor or bad condition.”
On the Pan-Borneo Highway, he said the ministry was looking at its implementation with a focus on its overall costs.
He said meetings on this issue had started between the contractors and the Finance Ministry, during which “some suggestions” were conveyed to them.
“They are supposed to come back to us and we will see what decision will be made on the ministry’s suggestions.”
He said as at May, about 22.2 per cent of Phase 1 of the highway on the Sarawak side had been implemented, while in the Sabah portion, 12 packages out of a total of 35 had been tendered out.