By Hafidz Baharom
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 18 — The Land Public Transport Commission (SPAD) has ordered a full audit of the monorail system within one week after the inner city rail line failed twice this month, raising questions over the reliability of Klang Valley’s public transport even as the federal government dishes out lucrative tenders for the infrastructure projects.
The state-owned Prasarana monorail system first broke down last Saturday evening right after train carriages left the Tun Sambanthan station for the Maharajalela station, leaving 183 passengers stranded high above the city roads without air-conditioning for about an hour, which caused one passenger to faint and two others to suffer breathing difficulties before they were rescued by fire and emergency personnel.
The monorail system stalled again yesterday for 45 minutes during the morning rush hour at 8.35am, this time trapping 200 passengers in a train bound for Bukit Bintang from Imbi station which encountered a technical glitch and stopped in the middle of the track.
“Since this is the second time that it’s happened, we will be conducting a full audit of the monorail system within one week,” SPAD chairman Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar told The Malaysian Insider.
He said the monorail system’s first failure was due to a short circuit in the electrical system.
“The first time it was due to a power system failure, which is why the system crashed.
“It was not a problem of overloading since the monorail trains have a capacity of 200 people,” he said.
Syed Hamid also said the emergency response for the second incident was within 10 minutes and operations were back online within an hour.
Prasarana is a wholly-owned government company, established to facilitate, undertake and expedite public infrastructure projects approved by the government.
Prasarana and its group of companies are also asset owners and operators of several public transport providers, namely the Ampang and Kelana Jaya LRT lines, KL Monorail system and bus operations in the Klang Valley and Penang.
