Why so much and so fast, DAP asks of ‘unconscionable’ Causeway toll hike

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 2 — Putrajaya should defer raising toll rates at the Causeway and review public feedback on the move, the DAP said today when questioning the “haste” in implementing the “unconscionable” hike.

Highlighting the public outcry following the increases that came into effect yesterday, DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang urged the government to postpone the implementation until “full and proper process of public consultation” was carried out on the subject.

“Why such drastic and astronomical toll hikes and implemented in such a haste, as if the authorities knew that what they were up to were so wrong and unjustifiable from any public interest standpoint that they wanted to have a ‘fait accompli’ in the shortest possible time!” Lim said in a statement today.

Urging Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to institute a moratorium on the increase upon his return from a two-day working visit to the Netherlands, the Gelang Patah MP said the unpopularity and “great sense of injustice” should suffice to trigger the review.

Lim said the increase to rates at the Causeway linking Malaysia to Singapore were essentially a substitution of a toll at the alternative Eastern Dispersal Link (EDL) and forces motorists who not use the link to bear this charge.

The nearly five-fold increase was also likely the “highest toll hike in Malaysian toll history,” he added.

Malaysia yesterday increased toll rates for private passenger cars exiting Johor via the Causeway from RM2.90 to RM9.70, a 334-per cent increase.

A RM6.80 toll was also introduced for the return leg that was previously free of charge.

In total, motorists must now pay RM16.50 for a roundtrip on the Causeway, up from RM2.90 previously.

This is in addition to the S$1.20 that Singapore charges passenger cars entering the republic via the same route, which the country says it will now raise to parity with the Malaysian charges.

The hike yesterday led to a reported “strike” by bus drivers who blockaded the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) Complex at the Causeway for nearly four hours.