In a follow up to his public disclaimer on crony capitalism, YTL Corp's chief Francis Yeoh should now lead by example and strive to fully uncloak Malaysia's murky power industry, an industry think tank said today.
 
The Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia (Awer) challenged YTL's subsidiary YTL Power and the Energy Commission (EC) to immediately drop private talks on a combined cycle power plant (CCGT) power plant in Johor and introduce competitive bidding instead.
 
The EC had on May 27 fast-tracked the development of the 1,000-1,400 megawatt plant in Pasir Gudang, giving a conditional contract to a consortium group consisting of YTL Power, Tenaga Nasional Bhd and SIPP Energy Sdn Bhd.
 
The EC had then said the move was necessary as it wanted the plant, also called Track 4A, to be operational in 2018 instead of 2020 as earlier planned.
 
"In view of this recent pledge made by Francis Yeoh himself personally, Awer urges him to instruct YTL Power to reject the Track 4A direct negotiation offer by EC.
 
"There is ample time to carry out transparent competitive bidding to ensure only equitable and affordable cost is passed to the tariff," Awer's president S Piarapakaran (right) said in a press statement.
 
Piarapakaran said that based on Awer's analysis, the demand for electricity was due to increase between three to four percent yearly and therefore Malaysia still had ample time to commission and build new power plants.
 
"We urge Energy, Green Technology and Water Ministry (Kettha) and EC not to use the 1992 ‘blackout’ strategy again to ‘legalise’ direct negotiation for Track 4A.
 
"Malaysia is proud to have more engineers and professionals nowadays compared to 1992. Don’t belittle their knowledge," Piarapakaran said.
 
YTL tycoon Yeoh who usually keeps a low profile, was slammed by Utusan Malaysia and other mainstream media after he reportedly said in a forum last week that YTL Corp's success was due to its own ingenuity and not government connections, as many had assumed.
 
Francis (left), the eldest son of billionaire Yeoh Tiong Lay who started YTL Corp in 1955, also denied that he was ever a crony of ex-premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad, despite the company's success as an independent power producer (IPP) based on government contracts it has received since 1993.
 
"Let all of us witness the truth! This will assist YTL to clear all the bad publicity that it claimed to have received in the past 20 years due to first generation power purchase agreements (PPA) it signed with TNB," Piarapakaran said.

He added that if the government cannot be transparent on Track 4A, then the officials should "step down immediately due to failure to carry out published pledges and misleading the rakyat, businesses and investors."

'Workers refuse to work with YTL'

Meanwhile, Utusan Malaysia today also carried an article calling on YTL Power to be dropped from Project 4A.
 
The Umno-owned paper quoted leaders from the TNB Workers' Union saying that its workers have refused to work with YTL after Yeoh's recent statements.
 
"We place much hope on the government and TNB to reject the involvement of YTL before any final decision is made on July 25," union leader Abu Husin Nikmat was quoted saying.

The union is said to represent some 35,000 TNB workers.