THE Sarawak stretch of the Pan Borneo Highway will miss its completion deadline by more than a year, said Works Minister Baru Bian.

The RM18.9 billion project – the largest infrastructure project in the state – is now two months behind schedule and is unlikely to meet the completion deadline of June 30 next year.

Baru said this after meeting all 11 work package contractors (WPCs) over the cause of the delay.

The 786.41km highway could be completed “latest by August 2022”, but Baru gave the contractors a June 30, 2022 deadline to chase.

The works minister earlier presented the letter appointing the Sarawak Public Works Department as the highway’s new superintending officer (SO) beginning today, after terminating Lebuhraya Borneo Utara (LBU) as the highway’s project delivery partner (PDP).

He said LBU in a January report stated the highway was only 44% completed against the scheduled 47%.

However, the Public Works Department and Opus, the independent consulting engineer (ICE) in verifying the report, found the project was actually 45.8% completed.

With the current delay, the verification also found that the percentage of completion even by the end of 2021 would only be 61.23%.

“Hopefully by the next three months (the transition period), we’ll be able to come up with the (definite) completion date of the project.

Baru said he is emphasising on the delay as they do not want to be accused later that the delay was because “we are taking over”.

“These are the facts (the delays) we have discovered and hopefully in two to three months time, more details will come.

“But this is the initial finding after engaging with the stakeholders.”

The PDP model was introduced by the previous Barisan Nasional government.

However, the new Pakatan Harapan government terminated the PDP model in May last year by reverting back to conventional project management to save some RM2 billion in costs. – February 20, 2020.