A-G's report: River of Life project delayed, won't meet 2024 deadline

KUALA LUMPUR: The River of Life (RoL) project is expected to be delayed and will not meet its deadline this year, according to findings in the 2/2024 Auditor-General’s Report.

According to the report, this was because all objectives of the RoL project had yet to be achieved.

“This includes RoL’s objectives to improve the river water quality to Class IIB (suitable for recreational use with body contact), which is hard to achieve, due to weakness in planning, implementation, low level of asset operations as well as low level of river care awareness.

“Putrajaya’s aspiration to get a return of up to RM4bil to finance the cost of implementing the RoL and avoid using public funds is also not achieved because the proceeds of land sales are subject to the respective owners,” the report read.

The report also noted that RM3.915bil has been spent on the RM4.363bil RoL project.

According to the report, up till July this year, 135 out of 159 projects had been completed, eight projects are still being implemented, and 12 projects are at the pre-implementation stage.

“Two projects which had their contracts terminated have yet to appoint a new contractor and another two projects were cancelled,” the report said.

The report also said audit analysis found that only 79.4% of river beautifying projects had been completed and only 50 out of 296 sewerage treatment plants had been rationalised or upgraded

“Analysis of the project period also showed that the project was eight years late, causing an increase in costs to the government,” the report said.

The report noted that River Relocation Works was not done along Sungai Gombak’s 2.2km stretch.

“Construction and repairs of two collapsible weir units costing RM33.37mil did not achieve objectives because one unit was not operational while one unit was not completed,” said the report.

Meanwhile, the report said the absence of a comprehensive business model caused the operations and maintenance of the RoL projects to be fully reliant on funds from Putrajaya.

“This caused RoL assets being inadequately maintained, abandoned, neglected, damaged and underutilised.

“The audit also found weaknesses in the aspects of project governance, including planning, monitoring, design preparation, consultant appointments and project execution,” said the report.