PUTRAJAYA: The Cabinet has agreed in principle on the re-development of transportation hub Kuala Lumpur Sentral and this will be without having any financial implication to the government, says Transport Minister Anthony Loke.
He said the Cabinet, which met on Wednesday (Aug 2), has agreed for the re-development to be done by Malaysian Resources Corporation Berhad (MRCB).
“The project will be done via privatisation at a cost estimated to be more than RM1bil and will be borne by MRCB.
“It will not have any cost on the government,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Loke said in return, the company would be given the rights to develop the area above the station with commercial and residential buildings.
He said the re-development of Kuala Lumpur Sentral station was necessary to meet the increasing number of passengers using the various modes of transportation there.
He said the station was originally designed to cater for 100,000 passenger capacity daily but the number of passengers had reached 200,000.
“The redevelopment will also allow for the station to be equipped with more sophisticated security systems, including the use of artificial intelligence which can monitor the movements of people,” he said.
One of the conditions stipulated by the government is that the re-development would not affect the operations of all the public transportation.
“The stations will be at the same location and will operate as usual with no disruptions,” he added.
The minister said that MRCB and the Public-Private Partnership Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department would hold discussions on the re-development plans and were given two years to finalise the agreement.
Plans to upgrade the heavily-used transport hub had been in the pipeline for some time.
In 2021, then transport minister Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong had said that the government was mulling a major upgrade on Kuala Lumpur Sentral Station.
The station is a transit-oriented development, opened on April 16, 2001 and is designed as an intermodal transport hub.
