Penang govt confusing the public with conflicting claims, says Teng

GEORGE TOWN: The state government has been “confusing the public” with contradictory answers on the undersea tunnel project, said state Barisan Nasional chairman Teng Chang Yeow.

He claimed there were discrepancies in the information given at state assembly meetings and in the Penang Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on the project.

“For a government which claims to be accountable and transparent, the answers should have been more clear cut,” Teng said at a press conference at the Gerakan headquarters here yesterday.

He took state exco member Lim Hock Seng to task for drawing differences between net and gross developed areas of previously stated sizes and values of land given to the tunnel contractor as payment so far.

“A layman won’t understand ‘gross’ and ‘net’ areas. It is a standing order that when exco members, including the Chief Minister, give answers to the state assembly, they have to be clear,” he added.

Teng maintained that the differing values of the land paid to the tunnel contractor – announced at different times – were worrying and criticised the state exco for the contradictory statements.

He said that based on the timeline detailed in the PAC report, “it wasn’t wrong for us to state that the land was transferred three months ahead of the completion of the studies”.

He said the PAC report showed that as of Sept 30, 2015, the feasibility studies were 99.3% ready and the detailed design was 93.3% ready, but the state declared the land was transferred in February 2015.

At another press conference, State Local Government Committee chairman Chow Kon Yeow said the state government used a similar financing model as the Jelutong Expressway (JE) project, now called Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway.

He said the agreement with the developer stated that land as payment-in-kind was to be alienated progressively in tandem with the work progress.

This, he said, was similar to the undersea tunnel project.

“Even JE was not completed in one shot. It took 18 years after the agreement was inked in 1997 and earthworks started in 1999. The last phase was only finished in 2015,” he said.