highway robbery

PLUS has made headlines again, this time for extending its concessionaire period by 8 years up till the year 2038. Apparently, this extension has been approved prior to the recent arguments, stating that the terms are in the original agreement.

So it has been proven that the government is more interested in protecting the interests of this crony company, instead of helping the People achieve better standards and prices in transportation. Consider the following benefits that PLUS gains from this extension exercise:

• Write off earlier RM0.96 billion government soft loan
• Take over Seremban-Port Dickson highway at RM50.27 million
• Extension of concession at RM361 million

All this just to finance works to upgrade 2 stretches of the North South Expressway? DAP is obviously disgusted by the incompetence of the Parliament and the inability of the Prime Minister to intervene and come clean with the transparency that he had promised earlier during the first few days of his premiership.

Blogger at Malaysia Today has an interesting article that likens PLUS to highway robbers, and how this project is actually being financed wholly by the government (and indirectly the motorists).

This is not the first time PLUS has made headlines. Many believe that this won't be the last. We might be looking at the precedence set for future extensions of the concessionaire periods, with the government bailing this company out of certain financial disaster.

Perhaps we might have to be content with paying tolls for the rest of our known lives. Currently the toll charges for a one-way trip from KL to Penang costs around RM40. We may be looking at RM90-RM100 (judging from the trend of 10% increment per 3 years) by the time we reach 2038. Who knows, by then, there will be another supplementary agreement signed that allows PLUS to continue collecting toll charges for an additional 50 years.