Petra Jaya Hospital to be ready June 2018 — Minister

KUCHING: The Petra Jaya Hospital, which is over 50 per cent completed, is scheduled for completion by June next year.

Works Minister Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof said the RM494.9 million mega project “is our main concern” and that the ministry would closely monitor it to make sure it could be completed on time.

“It was supposed to be completed by now. But the National Action Committee on the status of Delayed Projects decided to give the contractor a second chance which is until June 2018.

“If the contractor is still not able to catch up, we can take further action against the contractor,” he told reporters after a site visit here yesterday.

According to the Petra Jaya MP, the committee decided not to terminate the contract due to several factors, which might further delay the project.

Fadillah said the ministry did slap the contractor with several notices before issuing the ‘ final notice of termination’ over the delay of the project.

“There were a lot of notices before we issued the final notice of termination and that’s when the contractor appealed to the committee comprising not just my ministry but MoH (Ministry of Health) and EPU ( Economic Planning Unit).

“The committee decided to give the contractor a second chance because (termination would mean that) we need a new tender and processing time. What’s more, the price may go up. Those are among the reasons why the committee decided to give the chance and hopefully we can complete the project,” he explained.

When prompted for causes of delay for Petra Jaya Hospital project, he said among them were cash flow problem faced by the contractor and shortage of manpower.

Fadillah noted that some contractors had to import manpower from China given that domestic workers were not sufficient to meet the demand.

“There are a lot of projects going on in Sarawak. I was told that they were forced to import workers from China because domestic workers are not enough,” he said.

On the Sri Aman Hospital project, he said the contractor faced some technical issues including piling works.

“Because of this, they are given EOT, extension of time. So right now, the status is about 22 per cent (completed),” he said, adding the project was estimated at RM176.2 million.

Fadillah said his ministry would closely monitor these projects to make sure that people here and in Sri Aman would have better access to healthcare facilities.