Out of 160 'sick' projects, Tok Pa says 92 under ICU and 14 restored

KUALA LUMPUR: A total of 160 development projects nationwide have been categorised as 'sick’ (problematic) projects and 92 of them are being monitored by the Implementation Coordination Unit (ICU) of the Prime Minister’s Department.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Economy) Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed (pic) said out of the 92 projects, 41 projects were successfully restored according to the project's implementation schedule.

"A total of 51 more projects are in the rehabilitation phase,” he said during the Ministers’ Question Time at the Dewan Rakyat here today.

He was replying to a supplementary question posed by Datuk Syed Abu Hussin Hafiz Syed Abdul Fasal (Bersatu-Bukit Gantang) who wanted to know the number of government abandoned projects thus far this year and white elephant projects that have been abandoned.

Projects are categorised as ‘sick’ when the progress of physical work is delayed by more than 20 per cent compared with the planned schedule.

Meanwhile, Mustapa said Members of Parliament (MPs) who had problems with abandoned or delayed projects in their constituencies have been urged to submit their problems to him in writing.

"MPs know more about project issues in their respective constituencies. Yes we do have a monitoring system, but maybe this system is incomplete, so MPs need to become the eyes and ears of the government so that we can ensure that each development project runs and is completed as planned,” he said.

Mustapa said for 2022 - the second year of the 12th Malaysia Plan - a total of 6,755 projects under development expenditure have been approved with an allocation of RM75.6 billion and of that total, about 5,400 projects were continuation projects from the 11th Malaysia Plan (11MP).

He said to ensure that development projects were implemented smoothly, he and the Chief Secretary to the Government, co-chaired the National Development Project Implementation Facilitation Committee to expedite the implementation of these projects.

Since its inception in December 2020, the committee has met 10 times and the last was on Jan 31, he said. - Bernama