Open tender for Jerejak projects
(September 23rd, 2008)THE Penang Government will open tender for tourism deve-lopment projects on Pulau Jerejak by the end of the year.
Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng announced yesterday that the pro-jects would entail “billions” of ringgit’s worth of investment and take at least 10 years to complete.
He said the state wanted to promote holistic development on the former penal colony, including eco and sports tourism.
“We are also thinking of pro- moting medical and film tourism on the island,” he said after meeting with Sime Darby Berhad representatives in Komtar.
He said the state had received great interest from both foreign and local investors regarding Pulau Jerejak and other development projects on the island.
“To date, we have at least two Middle Eastern investors and one from Asia-Pacific who have ex-pressed interest in a creating a holistic masterplan for Pulau Jerejak.
“On the local front, Sime Darby has come forward with proposals on the project and other related projects in the Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER),” Lim said.
He added that the foreign investors involved were all linked with local companies and all tourism-related initiatives in the state would be conducted by open tender.
Lim added that there had been significant progress on other deve-lopment projects in the state.
“From this Thursday to Saturday, the public will see the unveiling of various development policies that we have worked so hard on for the last few months. All these projects are on track,” Lim said.
He added that they involved tourism projects on the state’s mainland and plans for Komtar, a state icon that houses the offices of local, state and federal authorities. On another matter, Lim said the state would take strong action on debtors who failed to settle their state student scholarships and loans.
“There are still RM15.6mil owed through these loans from 3,416 debtors.
“The state intends to make these names public through newspapers and the Internet.
“If all fails after warning letters are sent, we will sue them in court,” he said.
When asked whether Penang would be following in Selangor’s footsteps to amend its Standing Orders to give the State Assembly more powers to call witnesses, Lim said the state had certain powers under the Public Accounts Committee and would add to those powers when necessary.