Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (Mar 17): The Ministry of Education (MoE) plans to continue with contractor YTL Communications Sdn Bhd, despite the many shortcomings of the RM4.1 billion 1BestariNet project, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) disclosed today.

"We found that there are many weaknesses at the planning stage that caused the implementation of the project to be poorly executed," PAC chairman Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed told a press conference today after meeting with officials from the MOE.

"At the end of the day, the implementation of the first phase was poor and it shouldn't be continued but it's up to the ministry to decide," he added.

Despite the shortcomings of the project during its first phase, Nur Jazlan pointed out that the MOE had informed PAC of its decision to continue with the present contractor YTL.

Today's meeting between PAC and MOE officials followed irregularities and concerns raised by the 2013 Auditor-General’s Report on 1BestariNet.

Nur Jazlan said the MOE would be making the neccesary adjustments to improve on the project's implementation and user experience, and that the project was due to kickstart into its second phase as planned.

So far, the MOE has paid YTL Communications a sum of RM663 million, he said, noting that the RM4.077 billion project involving 10,000 schools is expected to take 15 years to complete.

Bukit Bendera Member of Parliament Zairil Khir Johari in a statement today highlighted a string of irregularities and non-conformance in the implementation of the project as revealed by the Auditor-General’s Report.

He said the complete roll-out of the 4G internet broadband infrastructure was due to be completed by March 30, 2013, but only 59.3% or 6,092 schools had received it.

Zairil also noted that 88.9% of the project had been completed by June 12, 2014, still short of the contracted target.

He said the audit report had stated that the project suffered from lack of value management, failure to obtain technical approvals from the MOE and the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), as well as failure to conduct a School Needs Assessment before installation of the infrastructure.

As a direct result, 58% of 501 schools surveyed by the National Audit Department reported that the 1BestariNet service did not cover the entire school compound, even though it was contractually obligated to do so, he added.

In addition, Zairil also said only 89.1% of 46 schools tested and 70.3% of 491 survey respondents revealed that broadband speeds averaged between only 0.2Mbps to 3.62Mbps, which is far lower than the contractually promised 4Mbps to 20Mbps.

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