KEMENTERIAN KERJA RAYA MALAYSIA

On the court record

The federal Ministry of Works, litigating tort claims arising from roads and bridges, CIPAA direct-payment questions under section 30, and pre-action discovery — the state's exposure as builder and paymaster of public infrastructure.

Kementerian Kerja Raya Malaysia (the Ministry of Works) is the federal ministry responsible for public infrastructure, and it appears in the corpus as a respondent in a mix of tort, construction-payment and civil-procedure disputes arising from public works — federal roads, bridges and government construction projects.

A recurring theme is liability for harm connected to public infrastructure. In one set of Malay-language appeals the claim was in nuisance arising from a federal-government bridge-building project, the court holding that mere personal inconvenience — "ketidakselesaan" (discomfort or inconvenience) that was merely personal — was not enough to found a claim in public nuisance. In other consolidated appeals from the Sessions Court, the cause of action was a damages claim arising from a vehicle said to have fallen into a rain-covered pothole, where the court found that the plaintiff had "gagal membuktikan wujudnya lubang" (failed to prove the existence of the pothole) beyond patch marks on the road surface.

Construction-payment and procedural questions round out the picture. One matter engaged section 30 of the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 on the direct-payment mechanism against a principal — whether a sworn averment of non-payment sufficed, whether a prior demand to the main contractor was required, and the treatment of retention sums. Another concerned pre-action discovery under Order 24 rule 7A of the Rules of Court 2012, and whether prospective plaintiffs already possessed sufficient material facts to commence an action, so that discovery was sought to establish a cause of action rather than merely to support one. Across these matters the Ministry's litigation reflects the characteristic legal exposure of the state as builder, landowner and paymaster of public infrastructure. The recurring question is how far the state, as the body behind a public work, must answer in tort and in contract for the harm and the non-payment connected to that work.