The Malaysian Insider

By Clara Chooi

IPOH, Nov 14 – The Pakatan Rakyat’s ad hoc taskforce for the Kuala Dipang bridge tragedy has completed its investigations and for now, their findings seem to pin the blame on the Perak Education Department’s Co-Curriculum Centre.

To counter this however, sources revealed to The Malaysian Insider today that certain quarters may be taking hasty actions to cover up the issue by shifting the blame away from the state agency.

If these allegations are true, then the results from both the PR’s taskforce and the one by the Education Ministry looks set to contradict one another — one party will blame the government and the other will place fault on a shoddy job by the contractor.

According to the sources, the supposed cover-up would involve discrediting the PR taskforce’s claim that the bridge had been illegal for no application for its construction had ever been sent to the Kinta Selatan district council for processing.

The taskforce, led by Tronoh assemblyman V Sivakumar, had revealed last week that before any structure is built within the council’s premises, an application must first be sent to its one-stop centre.

After this, the council must submit the proposal to four state agencies before granting any approval — the Department of Environment, Drainage and Irrigation Department (DID), Health Department and the Fire and Rescue Department.

The taskforce had subsequently claimed that the bridge was a project by the state’s Education Department’s Co-Curriculum Centre based in Pangkor Island and that no such application had been sent to the council’s one-stop center or to any department.

In fact, the taskforce said that interviews with the district education director, the chief assistant district officer, district officer and the DID, showed that neither party knew of the construction of such a bridge for no plan had passed through their hands.

According to the source however, actions were underway to coerce some of the departments to sign a newly created plan only now.

“They want to show that at least proper procedures were followed and that a proper application had been made to the relevant departments before the bridge was constructed,” said one source.

If such a plan materialises, it would cast doubt on the PR taskforce’s findings that the bridge was an illegal one.

It would also shift the blame from any government agency, to the Kuala Lumpur-based company that had built the bridge for the centre as a contribution.

In a public inquiry held at the Grand Kampar Hotel earlier today, PR taskforce members told a press conference that they would hold strong to their convictions that the bridge was both illegal and faulty.

Teja assemblyman Chang Lih Kang said that the foundation of bridge was flimsy and built on soft soil.

“The side of the bridge that collapsed was only fixed into the soft soil at about 2.8ft beneath the ground,” he said.

He added that according to the soil test the taskforce had conducted, hard soil could only be found at about close to 10 meters below the surface.

“But yet they merely ‘cangkul’ the ground up to less than 3ft to anchor the bridge on the soft soil,” he said.

Another taskforce member, Pasir Pinji assemblyman Thomas Su, said that the other side of the bridge had been built according to proper procedures and backhoe excavators had been used to anchor the bridge deeper into the ground.

“But on the other side, they did not. This is why it was uprooted like that,” said Su.

Chang added that according to the DID, no proper preventive works had been carried out to stop erosions from occuring.

“It was clearly a very shoddy job. The structure was not at all safe,” he said.

Sivakumar said that for now, the source of the problem seems to stem from the co-curriculum center for it had been responsible for the bridge’s construction in the first place.

“Even the district education director did not know of it,” he said.

Earlier, the taskforce had said that the center had once proposed the construction of such a bridge to the district education office but did not follow up on the matter when they were quoted an exorbitant price of RM110,000 to erect the structure.

They had allegedly gone ahead with the construction, which was undertaken as a contribution by the private company in Kuala Lumpur.

“The district education director only came to know that the bridge had already been constructed on Oct 16,” Sivakumar had said.

Meanwhile, during the public inquiry, disgruntled parents and teachers showed up to voice their dissatisfaction over the entire incident. Students who were involved also turned up to give a detailed account of the tragedy.

All the parents claimed that they had not known what the camp site was like when they signed the forms to allow their children to attend the programme.

During the tragic Oct 27 incident, three young schoolgirls who were a part of the 298 participants of a 1Malaysia camp, were killed when the suspension bridge they were crossing uprooted and fell into the Kampar river.

Nineteen others, who also plunged into the river, were successfully rescued.

After the incident, the two taskforce’s were formed — one by the PR and the other by the Education Ministry.

The PR taskforce however claims that the ministry’s committee had only conducted its investigations on a “government servant level” and had failed to interview the victims involved in the incident and their family members.

Sivakumar said the PR taskforce would officially reveal its findings on Monday while the ministry’s committee, which has also completed its investigations, has submitted its findings to Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and its report is expected to be revealed by end of the month.

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