THE cabinet has agreed to build a bridge to link Labuan and mainland Sabah, said Annuar Musa.

“A cabinet paper was submitted on September 9 to request for cabinet approval to build the Labuan-Sabah Bridge. The cabinet has approved this,” said the federal territories minister in Dewan Rakyat today.

He said the Federal Territories and Works ministries are currently finalising the terms of reference for a request for proposal (RFP) for the project.

“This project will be done on a public-private partnership, using the private finance initiative (PFI). This project will be done by competitive bidding by inviting RFPs,” said the Ketereh MP. 

The minister was responding to Rozman Isli’s (Labuan-Warisan) question on whether the government will build the bridge through RFP and whether the government will do land swaps with land owned in Kuala Lumpur.

Perikatan Nasional, through Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS), had promised to build the Labuan-Sabah Bridge if it won the recent Sabah elections.

Annuar said the government has received many suggestions from the private sector.

“More interesting is the timeline,” said Annuar.

He said the government hopes to finalise the terms of reference for the RFP by the end of the year.

“After that, we will need six to eight months to finalise the RFP document for the bidding process. We hope that the bids will be reviewed in September 2021 and the project decided in October 2021,” said the minister.

The Labuan-Menumbok bridge project was proposed by former prime minister Najib Razak in 2018 during the launch of the Labuan Development Blueprint 2030, but there were no cost estimates for the project.

Although it was meant to commence construction in 2020 and completed by 2023, Sabah has yet to agree to the plan.

If built, the bridge will be the second longest bridge in Malaysia, following Penang’s Second Link at 23km. The distance between Menumbok and Labuan is about 21km. – November 18, 2020.