KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 25 ― Five months after suspending the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL), the Cabinet decided yesterday to terminate the 688km China-backed infrastructure venture that was to link the two coasts of peninsular Malaysia across its central mountain range.
Chinese vernacular paper Sin Chew Daily cited an unnamed source also saying the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government is in talks with the project’s Chinese contractor, China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) on compensation, though the payment was not raised during yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.
A spokesman from the Chinese embassy declined to comment when asked if it had been notified of the ECRL termination.
“I cannot make any comments on this issue now,” the embassy’s second secretary (political) and media spokesman Tang Tang told Sin Chew.
The Sin Chew report came after Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad claimed ignorance on the status of the project when asked to verify an unsubstantiated Singapore news article claiming the government was looking for another contactor after cancelling the contract with CCCC.
“The way to handle it is to stop the contract, but if we stop the contract, we have to pay billions in compensation,” he told reporters yesterday.
In its report on Wednesday, Singapore daily Straits Times claimed an unnamed source told it that CCC was no longer the ECRL contractor, but that ambitious rail project was still on the cards as the federal government was seeking another builder.
Government adviser Tun Daim Zainuddin said on Tuesday that Malaysia was still in negotiations with China over the ECRL project.
The PH government shelved the ECRL last August, three months after defeating the Barisan Nasional in GE14, saying the rail project was too expensive.
