SHAH ALAM, 9 Dec: The open tender practice is among the causes of delays in road repairs in 2011, however, Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim assured that this will not happen again.

In fact, he said that the state government has used nearly 80 percent of the total allocation in the Malaysian Roads Records Information System (Marris) since 2012.

“In 2011, we set it so road repairs were carried out in an orderly manner. That is why there was a slight delay.

“But for the following years, since 2012, we have made sure that it did not repeat.

“In fact, every year, we use about 80 percent of the Marris allocation,” he said when commenting on the Auditor General’s Report recently regarding the issue of roads in Selangor.

The Audit Report last week revealed that the state government used RM640.24 million from the RM1.14 billion allocated by the Federal Government to repair roads.

Previously, the Selangor Government introduces and adopted new guidelines in the use of Marris provisions, beginning 2012, after finding that the old guidelines were vulnerable to abuse of power and leakages.

The state government then set strict guidelines to ensure that the use of Marris provisions were used properly, effectively and meets the needs of the people of Selangor.

Abdul Khalid said that this new guidelines involves many agencies and levels, in addition to involving an open tender process causing a delay in the spending of Marris allocations.