CORRUPT BARISAN NASIONAL - KOTA KINABALU: Sabah DAP hopes to foil any government cover-up of the shocking road works carried out by a government contractor in a rural part of the state.
The Kudat branch of the party has lodged an official report with the Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) over an RM3.5 million contract granted by the government for a road that disintegrated in a matter of months.
Fears that the wastage of public money may be swept under the carpet prompted Orong Sahap, a DAP member from Kudat, an economically depressed area of the state, to lodge the report.
He was accompanied by Kudat DAP chief, Alex Wong, Women’s wing chief Shirley Ipon and Kota Kinabalu MP Hiew King Cheu.
They want MACC to launch a thorough investigation on how the government had awarded the contract for the upgrading of a 4.5km stretch of the Sg Karang road in Kudat District to a contractor who did not know the job.
With the contract being far from transparent, the element of corruption could not be ruled out, they said.
Hiew, a civil engineer by training, said he was shocked by the state of the road after he was prompted to travel to the site following complaints from motorists in the area.
His staggering discovery prompted Deputy Chief Minister Joseph Pairin Kittingan, who is also the Minister of Infrastructure Development, to inspect the road and instruct the Public Works Department to order the contractor involved to reconstruct the whole road.
The Ministry has also ordered the performance guarantee/bond paid by the contractor withheld until the work was completed to specification.
Shoddy work
The promptness of the government action however sparked suspicion when several similar exposures of shoddy infrastructure work around the state met with silence from state authorities.
“This already demonstrates that there is really something wrong. How can they spend the tax payers’ money like that?,” asked Hiew.
He also noted that even the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) Tanjung Kapor State assemblyman Teo Chee Kiang had been stunned by shoddy road work and agreed that the whole project needed to be investigated.
Hiew also urged Pairin to instruct his ministry to come up with a full report on the issue.
“The truth must be brought out and any foul play must be exposed. Nothing should be swept underneath the carpet,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, Kudat DAP assured it would continue to highlight issues affecting residents of the district, especially those which involved misuse and abuse of public funds by the relevant authorities.
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