KUALA LUMPUR, April 21 — Contractor Hisniaga Sdn Bhd denied yesterday that its project with national railway firm Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd (KTMB) was delayed, refuting a claim made by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Datuk Nur Jazlan earlier this month.

The contractor also took issue with the Pulai MP’s claim that it is “technically insolvent”, claiming that Hisniaga was never bankrupt and had made profits in the last few years.

“It was stated that our company is technically insolvent. That is not true,” Hisniaga’s managing director Datuk Habib Ismail told Malay Mail Online in an interview.

Citing the company’s annual financial report for 2014, Habib said the company produced a turnover of RM66.47 million last year and made a profit of RM2.28 million.

Habib added that in 2013, Hisniaga made RM54.4 million turnover and RM2.6 million profit.

On April 2, Nur Jazlan revealed that Hisniaga had gone through a “limited tender” to win the project to shift KTMB’s operations from Singapore’s Tanjong Pagar to the Kempas Baru depot in Johor Baru.

Nur Jazlan said that the tender for the project was signed in December 2011 and was due to be completed in July 2013, but Hisniaga had yet to complete it, despite two extensions of time granted amounting to 30 days and 108 days.

The Pulai MP also said that the company has to date completed 99.3 per cent of the project, with the final portion of the track laying for the locomotive shed yet to be done.

While there were no cost overruns, Nur Jazlan said that KTMB is imposing Liquidated and Ascertained Damages of RM2.5 million on the contractor — which was blamed for the three-year long delay.

Habib insisted that the company had requested a third extension up until March 6 2015, and that the project had been “physically completed” when Nur Jazlan made the statement.

“Physically, the job is all completed. Actually next week we are doing a thanksgiving prayer ceremony (doa selamat) for the site,” Habib said.

He also claimed that the project was not 100 per cent completed since it was still waiting for the Certificate of Completion and Compliance, and the Certificate of Fitness from the local council, a process Habib said was “well-known” to take some time due to the bureaucracy.