The Hong Kong section of the high speed rail link is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2018. File photo: RTHK
A Legislative Council’s subcommittee debating additional funding for the controversial express rail link ended on Wednesday without a vote after lawmakers wrangled over technicalities of the meeting.
The Public Works Subcommittee was to vote on whether it would support a request for nearly HK$20 billion additional funding to complete the Hong Kong section of the over-budget and delayed rail link between the city and Guangzhou.
But lawmakers spent half of the two-hour meeting debating agenda arrangements and whether to jot down minutes of the meeting word for word. After asking officials the first question, Labour Party legislator Lee Cheuk-yan asked for an adjournment.
Pro-establishment lawmakers accused pan-democrats of "filibustering everything like crazy". But Lee denied that was his intention. He said the documents submitted by the government were not "sufficient at all".
This was the last meeting of the subcommittee this year.
The cost to complete the 26 kilometre cross-border rail link has ballooned to HK$84.4 billion, almost 30 percent more than the original estimate, and would not open until 2018 at the earliest.
http://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1231395-20151223.htm
