JOHOR BARU, Jan 24 — The Johor state government has set-up a special committee to look into completion of infrastructure and building projects that has been delayed for months if not years.
Johor Works, Infrastructure and Transport Committee chairman Mazlan Bujang said the committee will look into the project’s issues and assist the state government to immediately rehabilitate the delayed projects.
“The committee, which will be chaired by the respective district Public Works Department (PWD) engineer, will report their progress to the state government on a weekly schedule.
“We are keen to see the completion of several pending projects and want them to be delivered soon,” said Mazlan when contacted by Malay Mail.
He was responding to The Star’s report published today on Johor having at least eight statewide government projects, worth more than half a billion ringgit, that has been delayed for months or years.
According to the report, the projects include infrastructure and building completion and have been dubbed “sick projects”.
All of the projects were previously under the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration before Pakatan Harapan (PH) took over the state after last year’s May 9 general election.
Mazlan said based on the on-going progress, the state government is expected to see the completion and delivery of the new Iskandar Puteri district police headquarters as early as April this year.
“In addition to that, the highly-awaited Sungai Plentong bridge project is also scheduled to be completed at the same time,” he said.
The RM89.4 million Iskandar Puteri district police headquarters is among the longest project that has been delayed since 2016.
The report said the RM3.5 million Sungai Plentong bridge project along Jalan Masai Lama is another problematic project that was supposed to be completed by August last year, but has been delayed.
Mazlan, who is also the Puteri Wangsa assemblyman, said the state government was pro-active in ensuring that all the delayed projects that benefit the people will be completed soon following the establishment of the special committee.
He explained that previously a work committee overseeing the projects and reporting on a monthly basis did exist, but has now been replaced by the special committee.
“What the state government did was to empower the committee to look into the problems that delayed the projects and have weekly status updates from the meetings.
“With that, we (state government) will see several other delayed projects completed within the next few months,” said Mazlan.
