­­SARAWAK Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg sidestepped questions on the recently commissioned Darul Hana musical fountain in front of the state legislative assembly building, which PKR assemblyman See Chee How said was excessively priced at RM31 million.

Abang Johari said he will only take questions on the subject of healthy city at a media conference after opening the eighthe Alliance for Healthy Cities (AFHC) global conference and general assembly in Kuching today.

See, the Batu Lintang assemblyman, yesterday questioned why it costs that much to develop “a mere 80m stretch, 1/20 of the opposite bank’s development, right in front of the already majestic Dewan Undangan Negeri building (state assembly)” and had asked the Malaysian Anti-corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate the project.

Taking two new nearby landmarks for comparison, See said the recently completed Darul Hana pedestrian bridge or popularly dubbed as the Golden “S” bridge, which opened in November last year, costs RM35 million, while the floating mosque just a few metres upstream from the bridge and nearing completion, costs about RM10.6 million.

The bridge connects the commercial hub of the city on the south bank to the state assembly building, Istana and the 12 Malay villages on the opposite north bank.

“Is the Darul Hana musical fountain such a monumental engineering feat equal to the Darul Hana bridge or three times the cost of the floating mosque?” he asked.

He also asked if the project was “excessively priced” to favour a contractor.

See did not name the contractor, but the project was awarded to Autopower Consultant Sdn Bhd.

While See said he does not think that the chief minister and the state government “had intended to implement such wasteful and extravagant project”, he believed it is “poised to go down in history as an icon for irrational administration decision”. – October 17, 2018.