KUCHING, Oct 13 — Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr James Masing today he is satisfied with the progress of state-funded projects being implemented under the 11th Malaysia Plan (11MP).

He said that, so far, a total of 1,500 state-funded projects with a ceiling of RM37.11 billion have been approved for implementation under the 11MP.

“Of these 1,500 projects, 954 are physical projects while the remaining 546 are non-physical,” he told reporters after opening a three-day Workshop on Administration of Contracts towards Project Delivery Excellence for Sarawak Government Projects.

Masing, who is also the infrastructure and port development minister, said out of the 954 physical projects, 485 projects or 50.8 per cent have been completed while the remaining 469 projects or 49.2 per cent are in various stages of implementation.

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On the implementation of Rural Transformation Projects (RTPs), he said only 0.3 per cent or seven projects out of 2,721 approved projects for this year have been completed.

“One of the main reasons is the Covid-19 pandemic where most of these projects are suspended,” he said.

He added the implementation of RTPs from 2015 to 2019 has been very satisfactory.

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“As at September 17, 2020, out of 12,729 projects, 8,948 projects or 70.30 per cent have been completed while the remaining 3,781 projects or 29.7 per cent are in various stages of implementation,” he added.

He said the state Ministry of Infrastructure and Port Development has taken the lead to coordinate with all related government agencies and private sectors on process improvement to reduce and resolve issues of delay in project implementation.

He said a group to be led by State Implementation Monitoring Unit (SIMU) and facilitated by state Public Works Department (JKR) will list out common implementation issues, intervention measures, action plan and analysis report as standard templates for all Divisional task force to use.

“I know project management is very difficult because there is no single perfect solution to every problem encountered,” he said.

Masing praised State Secretary Datuk Amar Jaul Samion for establishing the Special Task Force which came into force on July 27, 2020 for permanent secretaries of the various ministries to monitor development programmes and projects implemented by the government.

“With the establishment of the task force, together with the Resident Offices and Divisional agencies, we can mitigate the root cause and reduce delays in project implementation,” he said.

He said a total of RM2.94 billion is allocated for the period from 2015 to 2020 to implement 12,729 RTPs in the state.