Fahmi: PJD Link project discontinued because developer failed to meet conditions

Malay Mail

KUALA LUMPUR, April 17 — The government has decided that it will not continue with the Petaling Jaya Dispersal Link (PJD Link) project.

Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil today said that the Cabinet has decided not to continue discussions with the PJD Link developer after they failed to fulfil the conditions precedent contained in the concession agreement (CA) to enable the agreement to take effect.

“The Cabinet has decided today that it will not continue discussions with PJD Link, (they) have applied for an extension to fulfil several conditions precedent, but this has been declined by the Cabinet.

“The result of this is that the developer (PJD Link) will not be able to fulfill several conditions precedent, hence the project will not be continued,” Fahmi told a press conference held after the Cabinet meeting here today.

When met later, Fahmi said there were 11 conditions precedent that the developer had to fulfil, out of which some have not been fulfilled.

“This is not the first time they have asked for an extension, so we have decided that there will be no more extensions,” he said.

On March 1, 2023, the company proposing to build the PJD Link was reportedly in the process of fulfilling the conditions precedent contained in the concession agreement (CA) to enable the agreement to take effect.

The PJD Link was a proposal to build a 34.3km dual-carriage expressway with four lanes and eight interchanges/ramps as an alternative to the heavily trafficked Lebuhraya-Damansara Puchong (LDP) to connect various fast-growing townships with Bandar Utama at one end and Bukit Jalil at the other end.

The PJD Link was approved by the previous federal government under the prime ministership of Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob in April 2022.

According to Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari, he reportedly said the PJD Link was approved in principle by the federal government on November 12, 2017 — then under Barisan Nasional control.

The proposal was then submitted to the Selangor Economic Action Council on September 3, 2020, for a residential survey to be carried out in Petaling Jaya before it was presented to the government on November 12, 2021, and given conditional approval.

The condition meant that a concession agreement was signed between the Perikatan Nasional federal government and the developer on April 5, 2022, for the construction company to conduct a full environmental impact assessment (EIA), social impact assessment (SIA), and traffic impact assessment (TIA) before the deal could be “activated”.

An independent survey released in May 2023 showed that 93.6 per cent of residents living along the proposed alignment of the PJD Link disagreed with the project, as they believed that noise and air pollution from the proposed highway would be intolerable and that it would not reduce traffic congestion as promised either.

Similarly, 93.6 per cent of the residents surveyed agreed that they and their families would be impacted by the project.

A residents group calling itself Say No to PJD Link opposed to the proposed highway filed a lawsuit in June 2023 against the director-general of the Department of Town and Country Planning, the Selangor state director of the Department of Town and Country Planning, the Selangor state government and the Malaysian government to obtain classified documents after claiming a lack of transparency in the conditional approval.