KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 3 — The Education Ministry (MOE) must explain the “outrageous” 99 per cent discount given to infrastructure giant YTL Communications to install 1BestariNet Receiver Integrated System (1BRIS) telecommunication towers that cost the government millions of ringgit in site rental a year, Opposition MP Zairil Khir Johari demanded today.
In a statement, the Bukit Bendera lawmaker noted that the government’s Valuation and Property Services Department (JPPH) had in January 2013 recommended a low rental rate of RM1,200 a month for each of the 3,203 schools nationwide that would have earned the MOE RM46.12 million a year.
However, he noted the MOE had slashed the price further to RM1,000 a month for each school in 2014, after YTL cried foul by claiming the rental charge was not in the contract, and asked if the decision was “incompetence or deliberate?”
He pointed out that the financial mismanagement was compounded by a bureaucratic bungle that miscommunicated the total YTL would have to pay to a paltry RM120 a year per site or RM384,360 a year for all 3,203 schools.
“The difference between this and JPPH’s initial recommendation is a whopping RM45.73 million, or more than 99 per cent,” the DAP parliamentary representative for Education, Science and Technology said.
He described the MOE officials’ judgment as “mind-boggling” for allowing the private company that also operates the revenue-generating YES 4G broadband service and had admitted the 1BRIS telecommunications towers was not confined to government school use.
“What justification could there be for a 99 per cent reduction in rental charges, from RM14,400 a year per site to RM1,000 and eventually to only RM120? MOE must immediately explain,” Zairil said.
The MOE’s 1BestariNet project that aims to provide high-speed 4G Internet access to schools began in 2011 and is expected to take 15 years to complete, worth RM4.077 billion involving 10,000 schools.
Last year, the Auditor-General’s Report found that the software and equipment was used by just one per cent of students in the participating schools.
Earlier this week, Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee announced that it found massive weaknesses in the MOE’s management of the project.
