PJD Link concession deal negotiations in final stage

SELANGOR government has been informed by Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM) that the Federal Government is in the final stage of negotiations in drawing up a concession agreement for PJD Link.

State infrastructure and public amenities, agriculture modernisation and agro-based industry committee chairman Izham Hashim said, “The concessionaire, however, will still have to meet the pre-concession agreement stipulated by the state within 12 months, with an option of additional three months, before the concession agreement takes full effect.”

He was replying to a question from Rajiv Rishyakaran (PH-Bukit Gasing) on the application status for construction of the link.

PJD Link is a proposed 34.3km expressway between Damansara in Petaling Jaya and Kinrara in Puchong.

The proposed alignment will start after the Damansara Toll Plaza on the North Klang Valley Expressway and end at the Bukit Jalil Highway interchange.

Izham also said that the state Town and Country Planning Department (PlanMalaysia@Selangor) had presented a flowchart on “Development Planning Process for Highways and Major Infrastructures in Selangor” at a Selangor Economic Action Council meeting.

It was subsequently approved by the Selangor State Executive Council on Feb 16.

“The flowchart recommended several amendments to the planning process.

“One of them is that the environmental impact assessment (EIA), social impact assessment (SIA) and traffic impact assessment (TIA) reports tabled under Section 20 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1976 must be brought at the negotiation stage for solicited applications and the technical negotiation stage for unsolicited applications.

“Unsolicited applications refer to random incoming applications while solicited applications are those that were planned earlier,” Izham explained.

The move, he said, was to ensure that the EIA, SIA and TIA reports would be discussed at an earlier stage rather than at a later stage as previously practised.

“If the state authorities find that assessment reports are unable to meet the stipulated conditions, the state government will likely reject the project.

“If there are doubts on the integrity of the SIA because of public objections, the state government has the right to appoint a third party to carry out its own assessment,” he said.

He proceeded to list the other flowchart processes, including recommendations on technical negotiations and land acquisition matters.

“To a supplementary question from Rajiv, Izham said: “The state government has been briefed on PJD Link’s proposed alignment and has given its feedback, but that was before the flowchart recommendations came into place.

“To date, we have yet to receive any EIA, TIA, SIA or other technical reports from the concessionaire,” he added.

Rajiv also requested that elected representatives be invited by the Highway Monitoring Committee to briefings on proposed highways affecting their constituencies so that the assemblymen could give their views, to which Izham acknowledged and agreed to do so.