Khalid: Selangor wants the rights to develop, operate and maintain Langat 2

(The Star) – The Selangor government wants the rights to develop, operate and maintain the Langat 2 water treatment plant.

Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim said on Saturday the state government had asked the Energy, Green Technology and Water Ministry to consider its request by giving the rights to its subsidiary companies.

Khalid said the state government, via its subsidiaries, would like to develop the main package of Langat 2, as well as operate and maintain the plant.

This is because the state government has allocated 179ha of state land out of the 400ha needed for the project without getting anything in return, he said.

“Selangor is also the signatory to the raw water purchase agreement with the Pahang state government, and all payments of raw water to Pahang will be borne by Selangor,” he said.

He added that the raw water licence will also be issued by the Selangor state government, while the Cabinet had agreed on Jan 16, 2008, for state investment arm Kumpulan Darul Ehsan Berhad (KDEB) to be appointed as the “operating and maintenance company” when Langat 2 is complete.

The RM3bil Langat 2 water treatment plant will receive raw water from Pahang via an underground tunnel, which is almost complete, and can process 1,130 million litres per day (MLD).

On a related matter, he explained that the different figures of water reserve issued by state water distributor Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (Syabas) and the state government was due to different methods of calculation.

“Syabas claims that the water reserve is less than 1% as it used the current average production of 4,700 MLD compared to its distribution capacity of 4,661MLD.

“The state government based it on the maximum production capacity of 34 water treatment plants, which is 4,832MLD as opposed to the distribution capacity of 4,661MLD. That’s how we estimated the water reserves to be at 3.5%,” he said.