By By Datuk Ts Dr. Hj Ramli Amir, former President of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Malaysia and Vice-President of CILT International for Southeast Asia
KOTA KINABALU: The KKIA expansion delay is not just about “land matters”; it is a symptom of a deeper structural issue in Sabah’s infrastructure governance—fragmented responsibilities, weak project-level KPIs, and the absence of a single integrating framework being applied decisively on the ground.
In practice, the Sabah Integrated Logistics and Transport Masterplan (SILTMP) is the missing backbone that should align land, transport, economic, and institutional decisions, but for now, most actors still operate in silos.
(https://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news/284425/rm500-million-kota-kinabalu-international-airport-upgrade-on-hold-due-to-land-matters/)
SILTMP as the missing integrator
SILTMP, at its core, is designed to provide a coherent narrative and spatial logic for how ports, airports, roads, rail, logistics hubs, and urban development should interact to support Sabah’s long-term economic agenda.
It is meant to move the state away from project-by-project thinking towards corridor, node, and ecosystem thinking, where KKIA sits as a critical aviation and multimodal gateway.
Yet in the current KKIA case, the masterplan’s role appears more conceptual than operational, referenced in speeches and documents, but not embedded as a binding framework for decisions on land use, timelines, and agency mandates.
Siloed institutions and fragmented accountability
At present, different institutions carry pieces of the KKIA puzzle: federal ministries (Transport, Finance), MAHB, state ministries (such as Works, Land, and economic planning units), local authorities, and land offices.
Each has a slice of authority—funding, regulation, land, planning approval, operations—but there is no single project “owner” that everyone recognises as the conductor of the orchestra.
Without a clear, empowered coordinating entity tied directly to SILTMP, agencies tend to defend their turf, move at their own pace, and interpret “priority” differently. Responsibilities are not translated into measurable, time-bound KPIs at the project level, so delay is nobody’s hard failure, merely “process”.
Land matters as a governance symptom
The public explanation—land-use issues, site finalisation, and questions around affected areas—reveals how governance gaps manifest in very specific bottlenecks. Land is under state jurisdiction, but the project’s strategic and financial drivers come from the federal level and MAHB.
When masterplan-led zoning, early land banking, and proactive stakeholder engagement are missing, land only becomes a serious issue when engineering design meets reality on the ground.
At that stage, negotiations, compensation, relocation, and legal clarifications become reactive, politically sensitive, and time-consuming, rather than a planned, sequenced part of a corridor-development strategy under SILTMP.
Coordination as the true critical path
From a logistics and project management lens, the critical path for KKIA is no longer purely technical (terminal design, runway capacity, apron layout); it is institutional alignment.
The timeline is determined by how fast agencies can sit around the same table, agree on a definitive land and site plan, assign responsibilities with deadlines, and escalate decisions when they stall.
Without a strong coordination mechanism—such as a KKIA/SILTMP implementation task force with clear authority, reporting channels, and cross-agency KPIs—the project is at the mercy of slower-moving processes, conflicting priorities, and risk aversion. “Acceleration” becomes rhetoric rather than an operational discipline.
The KPI gap and project culture
The absence of explicit, publicly monitored KPIs for state-side tasks—land acquisition milestones, planning approvals, stakeholder engagement, inter-agency decision points—creates a culture where delays carry little consequence.
MAHB and federal actors may have investment-recovery models and completion targets, but if state-level tasks are not bound to similarly stringent and transparent performance metrics, the system defaults to business-as-usual bureaucracy.
For a gateway project like KKIA, SILTMP should logically cascade down into project charters that define who is accountable for what, by when, and with what consequence.
Until that culture of performance-based responsibility is embedded, even well-funded, strategically endorsed projects will remain vulnerable to avoidable slippage.
From masterplan to execution discipline
The larger narrative is that Sabah has the right strategic direction on paper: SILTMP provides the framework, and projects such as KKIA, ports, and logistics hubs are conceptually aligned with the goal of integrated regional connectivity and economic uplift.
The challenge is transforming that strategic intent into execution discipline—where every major project is treated as a test case for how well the state can coordinate, enforce land-use decisions, and deliver infrastructure on schedule. KKIA’s current delay is therefore more than a one-off problem; it is a signal that Sabah must now move from planning-led legitimacy to implementation-led credibility.
That shift hinges on using SILTMP not just as a reference document, but as a live governance tool with binding timelines, empowered coordination, and real KPIs attached to institutional responsibilities.
