Pakatan vows to restructure highway toll collection

KUALA LUMPUR: Pakatan Harapan, which drew flak for not delivering on its previous election pledge to abolish tolls, plans to restructure highway concessionaires to gradually reduce toll collection if it recaptures Putrajaya.

DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke said the abolishment of highway tolls could not be done overnight.

“In GE15, our manifesto is to continue our promise to restructure toll concessionaires, and hopefully, we can further reduce the toll rate.”

“Eventually, we hope the tolls can be abolished,” he said at an event yesterday to hand over surat watikah (authorisation letters) to election candidates.

Loke said Pakatan would take a more realistic approach to toll reduction.

In the 22 months as the government, he said Pakatan managed to reduce toll rates by 18%.

Loke also said DAP would contest a total of 55 parliamentary seats.

As for the Pontian seat, he said DAP would field Shazwan Zdainal Abidin, who is a Johorean.

“We had asked for Sembrong, but PKR doesn’t want to give up Sembrong. So they considered Pontian, and we had an agreement on that,” he said.