KUALA LUMPUR: The Transport Ministry is not ruling out sabotage as the cause of disruption at the Kelana Jaya light rail transit (LRT) line.
Transport Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong said his ministry would appoint international legal body WSP to investigate whether the LRT system had been hacked, among others.
"The government has decided to appoint a renowned international legal body, WSP, to observe every aspect, including the possibility of sabotage.
"Even though the results were based on data and facts, we (also) need to look into other aspects and not make our own judgement," he said.
Earlier, Wee mentioned that two malfunctions on the tracks were detected during inspection; the first was found at one of the vehicle control centres (VCC) and the other at the signal managing centre (SMC).
The malfunction at the VCC had caused the system to lose track of the train direction during operation.
"There was a malfunction at one of the VCCs. Due to this, we could not see the train direction from the system.
"Hence, the Thales Group original equipment manufacturer (OEM) from Toronto, Canada, had closely followed the inspection virtually and conducted tests for any troubleshooting on the tracks," he said.
Following the malfunction, operations at 16 stations along the Kelana Jaya line had been suspended from Nov 9 to Nov 15.
On Wednesday, Prasarana chief executive officer Mohd Azharuddin Mat Sah said a malfunction on the LRT automatic train control (ATC) system was detected last Saturday (Nov 5). However, the RapidKL engineering team was not able to address the issue.
About 200,000 commuters were reportedly affected by the disruption of the LRT service.