Exclusive | Delay to Hong Kong’s new HK$33.7 billion border crossing to Shenzhen adds to woes for troubled contractor

Leighton Contractors (Asia) is building checkpoint’s HK$7.1 billion passenger terminal facilities but expected 2018 completion date cannot be met, sources say

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The unfinished Hong Kong side of the border checkpoint is markedly different from the Shenzhen side. Photo: Roy Issa

Published: 8:32am, 14 Oct 2018Updated: 11:19am, 14 Oct 2018

A multibillion-dollar border crossing to Shenzhen will be delayed until at least the middle of next year with an already troubled contractor plagued by problems building related facilities, the Post has learned.

The overbudget HK$33.7 billion Liantang-Heung Yuen Wai boundary control point in the northeastern New Territories was due to be completed by the end of this year. It was allocated HK$25 billion (US$3.2 billion) but hit by cost overruns of about HK$8.7 billion in 2015.

Leighton Contractors (Asia) – recently barred from tendering for government projects for 15 months after shoddy work was exposed on Hong Kong’s costliest rail link – is the main firm on the HK$7.1 billion contract for the passenger terminal building and associated facilities.

The border crossing was originally meant to be completed by this year. Photo: Roy Issa

Sources said work had been beset by delays. Aerial footage taken by the Post shows that the terminal building on the Shenzhen side, in contrast, looks ready for immediate use.

In her policy address on Wednesday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor briefly touched on the project, which started in 2013 and would be the city’s seventh border crossing to Shenzhen, saying only that it was expected “to be completed in 2019”. She gave no further details or explanations.