COMMENT I fully welcome and endorse Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai’s expressed support for the Public Accounts Committee's (PAC) recommendation that the auditor-general investigates the KL International Airport 2 (KLIA2) project, as reported by The Star two days ago.

The PAC report found many suspicious and controversial decisions that have resulted in not only KLIA2 being built at more than double the original budget of RM1.7 billion, but also having been delayed extensively, multiple times.  

The report also found that the design of the airport had compromised Malaysia’s competitive advantage to serve and grow the low-cost carrier industry.

These included the decisions to locate KLIA2 at KLIA West, a site that has been documented by engineers as costly and ill-suited for airport construction; and the choice of a satellite-type terminal instead of a finger pier terminal as proposed by the airport consultants.

Despite the fact that it took exactly six weeks for Liow to endorse PAC’s key recommendations, after sidestepping the question many times, it is certainly better late than never.

However, Liow must not stop at just giving a verbal endorsement of the PAC recommendations. 

As the minister responsible for the civil aviation industry in Malaysia, he must ensure that the specific instruction to the Auditor-General’s Office to carry out the audit is indeed carried out.

Six weeks to endorse recommendations!

It took six weeks for the minister to verbally endorse the recommendations, hence we certainly hope that it will not take an even longer time for him to deliver the instructions for the special audit by the auditor-general.

We call upon the transport minister to provide the relevant timeline and action plan for the audit to be done.

If Liow is able to ensure that the audit is carried out quickly, we will not hesitate to support and praise the minister for taking concrete actions to execute his responsibility.

However, if the audit fails to materialise, I am certain that he will be pilloried for being yet another Barisan Nasional minister who is “no action, talk only”.


TONY PUA is DAP national publicity secretary and MP for Petaling Jaya Utara.