Yong chided for remarks against SEB officers

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CAPABLE: Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hassan holding his winding-up speeches for the three portfolios he is heading – Ministry of Industrial Development, Ministry of Public Utilities and Ministry of Resource Planning and Environment as second minister yesterday.

KUCHING: Minister of Public Utilities Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan has chided Violet Yong (DAP-Pending) for making serious allegations against senior officers of Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB) and its tender evaluation process.

He said the allegation was highly unethical.

“On SEB’s tender award to Alstom Services Sdn Bhd (Alstom) for the Tudan 275kV substation reconstruction project, let me assure this august House that the highest integrity is maintained by SEB in its contract and procurement policy.

“SEB follows a robust multi-layered and multi-party process which requires all management proposals or evaluation for high value contracts to be presented to the board of directors before seeking endorsement from the state cabinet,” he said in his winding up speech yesterday.

He said the contract award, which was extremely critical to enhance the reliability of electricity supply to Miri City, followed the same rigorous approach to ensure compliance to the quality standards, safety requirements and effective project execution.

“Following a comprehensive evaluation and stringent assessment of the short-listed tenderers, both local and foreign, Alstom, a locally incorporated company, is adjudged to have offered the best value for the project, ranking highest in the technical evaluations in terms of equipment, competency, capacity and project management capabilities,” he said, adding that the lowest tenderer a company from India, was not selected from the three short-listed tenderers as it
was last in the technical ranking, had not carried out any project in Sarawak previously and there was risk of delay in project completion with consequent costs escalation assessed to be very high and unacceptable.

Nevertheless, Awang Tengah assured the august House that in the event that there should be any investigation by Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) into the matter, his ministry and SEB would fully cooperate in such investigation.

“My ministry will not condone any malpractices in any company or entity under its jurisdiction. Should MACC investigations yield credible evidence of malpractices in the award of the contract to Alstom, there is a justified legal ground to have the contract terminated.”

Awang Tengah also said that errors made by Yong in her accusations whereby the senior officers mentioned were not members of SEB board of directors; they were not the final decision-making authority on the award of the contract; Einar Kilde is not the brother-in-law of SEB chief executive officer Datuk Torstein Dale Sjotveit, nor are they in any other way related; and that Sjotveit has never been employed by Alstom nor have any of his family members.

He thus challenged the Pending rep to repeat the allegations outside the august House so that the persons concerned could institute libel action against her to defend themselves in a court of law.

Speaker Datuk Amar Mohd Asfia Awang Nassar asked Yong if she was prepared to do so.

Yong retorted that she raised the issue as it concerned Sarawakians and if given the opportunity to repeat the allegations outside, she assured members of the august House that she would repeat some.

“I will still go out and tell the people that SEB awarded €40 million to Alstom, a corrupt company which our state still wants to work with. Why can’t we choose a clean company instead of a dirty company? I will repeat that outside,” she said.

To this, Asfia told Yong that if she would repeat the exact words she said in the house, she would only repeat the important points concerning the people.

When Asfia accused her of misleading the august House, Yong said: “You cannot force me to say something which I think is not relevant to speak outside.

“This is the right place for me to speak. How can you challenge me to go and speak outside? But I will assure you that I will speak on Alstom,” she said.

This led to a terse exchange between the duo, which eventually led to Asfia saying he was leaving it to the Barisan Nasional (BN) to table a motion against her (Yong) under Standing Order 32(12) which stipulates members should not mislead the Dewan deliberately.