Good reasons to scrap rail projects

TUN Dr Mahathir Mohamad should be congratulated for his firm decision to drop the HSR project to reduce the budget deficit and ballooning government debt. May I suggest that he also firmly drop the ECRL project too? The grounds for dropping the two rail projects are clearly justified.

Firstly, they are very expensive, not commercially viable and will require support in the form of large subsidies once operational. More importantly, they are environmentally destructive, particularly the ECRL, with so many tunnels to be bored through the pristine main range and people resettlements to be made. Adequate alternatives comprising road, rail and air transport to Singapore are already available in the case of the HSR project.

Indeed, the very objective of restoring the soundness of public finance alone, which should be a highly desirable and priority objective, is ground enough to justify cancelling these two very costly and uneconomic projects.

The compensation cost to be borne is worth it as the savings that will be made in the future are positive and substantial. The Government should exercise its sovereign strength to drive a hard bargain to substantially reduce the punitive and unreasonable compensation demanded by all those with vested interests in these two projects.

DR RAJA LOPE RAJA SHAHROMET Petaling Jaya