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Contract given to incinerator designer and builder Ebara in dire
straits should be terminated to safeguard Malaysians' interest
Press Statement
by Ronnie Liu Tian Khiew
(Petaling Jaya,
Monday):
The Ministry of Housing and Local Government should terminate
the contract given to Ebara Corporation of Japan which is in dire straits to
safeguard the interest of Malaysians.
According to a latest report (attached) dated April 30th by Nikkei
Industrial news, the incinerator designer and builder Ebara Corporation has
recently retrenched about 400 people out of 1,800 from its engineering
division due to poor technology and wrong estimates on building cost.
The company lost about 27 billion yen (US$ 225 million) last year largely
due to the failure of gassification-type incinerators. The cost of
construction estimated by Ebara was found much lower than the actual cost.
The actual cost was found to be very much higher simply because the company
could not run the plant smoothly. The double jeopardy arises when the new
technology used by Ebara turned out to be very problematic. Ebara has to
spend a lot of extra money to fix the problem. In last January, the extra
budget was estimated at 7.5 billion yen (US$62.5 million).
The same report says that Ebara has spent 6.8 billion yen (US$56.7 million)
to fix the plants built in 2002, and it will certainly need more money to
fix the plants built this year. Ebara has estimated the building cost of
incinerators for 2002 at 73 billion yen, but it has spent about 90 billion
to build those plants.
Last Saturday, those who watched the program "Japan Today" over ASTRO would
know that Japanese are now calling their government to close down all
incinerators due to serious environmental problems. Many incinerator
operators were slapped with summonses because of causing damage to the
environment. Many farmers and fishermen have been claiming compensation from
the authorities because the discharge of dioxin and other toxic gases and
particles from incinerators have brought serious consequences to their well
being and livelihood.
Malaysians do not want to be in the same shoes with the Japanese. We cannot
afford incinerators for both safety and cost factors.
Malaysians do not need incinerators. And we certainly do not want a
contractor who's in deep trouble to build incinerators for us.MCA new
president Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting should know better than ordinary Malaysians
as a minister.
(26/5/2003)
* Liu Tian Khiew, DAP national publicity secretary and DAP Selangor
secretary
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