Those with long memories will recall how government officials originally so badly underestimated the bill for the airport railway that, when the true figures became known, it led to a four-year row with Beijing about cost overruns. Nor was this the only project affected in this way: costs on airport-related works have shown a habit of soaring far above initial estimates.
Now we have been presented with another case. Yesterday, provisional legislators were told of a 250 per cent cost overrun in the construction of six sewage tunnels which form part of the harbour clean-up strategy. This will hardly help persuade an already sceptical Tung Chee-hwa of the merits of the scheme. Nor will it be easy to convince furious legislators to approve the $3.3 billion now estimated to be needed to complete the tunnels.
At least there is an identifiable reason for the cost overruns in this case. The original contractors on two of the tunnels stopped work in July 1996, claiming to have encountered 100 times more water than expected, which made it too dangerous to continue without design modifications which would have required extra funding. The Government refused to pay and fired the contractors, so disrupting construction of all six tunnels.
Questions have been since asked about whether the Government should have foreseen the problem. Each side is taking legal advice and pursuing one another for damages. Officials said yesterday that the inflationary impact of the delay accounted for close to half of the overrun. Much of the remainder is attributable to the cost of paying a replacement contractor.
Wherever the blame lies, it is taxpayer who once again has to pick up the bill. After so many years of experience, it is surely not too much to ask for civil servant to learn to estimate costs more accurately.
