CRAB ISLAND (PULAU KETAM)


Overview

          

The Pulau Ketam is located 30 nautical miles from Port Klang (Longitude : 03 01 03 N, Latitute : 101 15 19 E). The area is about 22.921 km2. The Island is a mangrove island surrounded by mud flat area. It was reported that the first settlement was built in the year 1920. Total population is about 10,000 of which 95% are Chinese, 4% Malay and 1% Indian. There are four neighborhood fishing villages consisting of Ketam Island Township, Bagan Teo Chew, Sungai Lima and Sungai Dua. Most of them are fisherman and seafood restaurant operators. There are also a few aborigines families in Sungai Dua living in traditional fishing village.

There are many natural attraction for tourist to visit Pulau Ketam. Besides enjoying meals at sea-food restaurant, they can also do fishing, jungle tracking at the mangrove, birds watch and monkey watch. As a mangrove island, its ecosystems is very fragile and sensitive to any human activities and unsustainable development.


Transportation and Communication

Traveling by ferry from Port Klang will take about 45 minutes to reach the jetty at Pulau Ketam. The ferry can bring 80 passengers in one trip. There are 14 trips during working days and they are increased to 22 trips during weekend and public holidays. There are 8 ferries operating per day. The price for one way adult ticket is RM 5.30 (USD 1.40) and for children below 12 years is RM 3.50 (USD 0.95). The average number of local tourists visiting the island is about 500 person per month and foreign tourists are about 50 persons per month. Port Klang is accessible from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and Kuala Lumpur via regular buses, taxis and trains services. In the absence of proper motorway, the people in the island are using either motorcycle, bicycle/engine-powered bicycle or simply walk to move from one place to another.

At Port Klang jetty, there are also ferry terminal to Tanjung Balai, Indonesia. Tourist can continue their traveling to the destination within 4 hours by ferry. At West Port of Pulau Indah, 10 km from Port Klang, there is a Star Cruise Terminal in which tourist can join the travel package to Penang and Langkawi Islands in the north of Peninsular Malaysia, and to Phuket island in Thailand.

          
Public Facilities

                      

State government provides utilities such as jetty, potable water supply, electricity, community hall, primary and secondary school, police station, fire station, clinic and solid waste disposal services. Commencing from the jetty, networks of cemented and wooden bridge roads were built to provide transportation/communication link for people in the settlements.


Socio Economic Activities

Most of the residents are fishermen and they are using small boats and fishing gears such as nets and fishing rods. The large-scale fishery activities are actually being carried out in the open sea of Straits of Malacca and not within the waters of Pulau Ketam. Cage aquaculture activities are carried out by some entrepreneur fishermen in nearby straits, well-protected by the surrounding cluster of islands i.e. Pulau Klang and Pulau Tengah. At this moment there are 11 units of cage aquaculture farms in the area, rearing species such as Grouper (Kerapu) and Giant perch (Siakap). The fishes are regularly harvested and supplied to the seafood restaurants/hotels in Pulau Ketam, as well as to Port Klang in the mainland. The aquaculture operators also provide home-stay package to tourists who would like to experience the unique setting of the cage culture farms.

The main attraction for tourist to come to this island is to enjoy the seafood especially during weekend and public holidays. The unique combination of sceneries of floating houses and seafood restaurants serving fresh fish and shell-fish dishes, and the experience of walking through the mangrove forest blessed with diverse flora and fauna, is just simply invigorating. They can also shop for salted fish and other marine-base products at rows of shop houses in the town centre.


                 

ICM Initiatives

1 REHABILITATION OF MANGROVE AND RESTORATION OF HABITATS

                                              

Mangrove is an important habitat for bio-diversity of flora and fauna including birds and mammals, as well as serving as nursery and spawning ground for fish and shell-fish, and buffer against erosion. It is a reservoir of carbon sink, media for bio-filter and sometimes also serves as temporary sanctuary for migratory birds, such as the case in mangrove sanctuaries around the Pulau Ketam areas, between the period Nov-April yearly.

Under the ICM program, the degraded mangrove of Pulau Ketam will be replanted and the area gazetted as forest reserve. The replanted mangrove and the existing mangrove forests around the areas will be able to regenerate, and perform its full ecosystem function, hence its natural attractions will be greatly enhanced. Board walks, Bird Watch Tower and Mangrove Research and Education Center will be constructed and jungle tracking, boating expeditions and other ecosystem friendly activities will be appropriately promoted. In this regard, the Forestry Department, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks and SWMA will work together cohesively to achieve this noble aim.

2 MASTER PLAN FOR ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION AND ECO-TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

                                               

The Port Klang ICM program covers the area-wide districts of Klang and Kuala Langat. As mentioned earlier, centre-piece of development for this master plan will be the ecosystem restoration and eco-tourism development for Pulau Ketam. It is intended to be a show-case model for harmonizing economic development with sustainable environmental management, appropriately underpin by wide-spread social participation. It would also fit in nicely with the local Agenda 21 of which the PEMSEA’s projects have been closely associated with.

3 ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS PROGRAM

                                            

As part of the ICM initiatives and public education program, the SWMA and the Klang Municipal Council staff carried out a series of visits to Pulau Ketam. Dialogues and consultative sessions were conducted with local populace and the findings revealed that there is a glaring weakness in awareness, in particular on environmental and sanitary issues. It was noted that solid and human wastes were still being disposed off indiscriminately onto the ground below. However in the areas of solid waste management, it was reported that there has been much improvement achieved since 2000, i.e. the year Alam Flora, the concessionaire for solid waste management started its operation in Pulau Ketam.

The dialogues also revealed that the local community is actually responsive to the introduction of a sustained community-based environmental awareness programs, and they felt that it should start from the school children’s education. It is apparent therefore that for any sustainable environmental enhancement and management program, an intrinsic success factor is the establishment of a self-help environmental enhancement campaigns. SWMA and the Klang Municipal Council with the cooperation of other agencies will undertake this issue as part of the ICM program. Areas that would be covered are the hygiene and sanitary issues, (reduce, reuse and recycling (3R) in solid waste management), sewage disposals, biodiversity of flora and fauna, multi-factional functions of mangrove ecosystem, best environmental management practices, etc.

4 ENVIRONMENTAL UTILITY MANAGEMENT SERVICES

                                               

During the last two decades of 80’s and 90’s, the sanitary and hygienic conditions in Pulau Ketam were so bad, so much so that the island lost much of its glamour as focal point for tourism in the area. Recognizing this deplorable state of affair, the ICM program categorically states that, ‘a pre-requisite for any sustainable development of Pulau Ketam as a service center and showcase model for ecosystem restoration and eco-tourism development program, rests with finding a permanent solution to the current deficiency in environmental utility management services, namely the solid waste and sewage management services’. This is also in line with the policy statement of the Structural and Local Plans of Klang District on Pulau Ketam. It is imperative therefore that it should be included as an intrinsic part of the overall development package for the island.


5 DEVELOPMENT AS SERVICE AND SEAFOOD CENTER

                            

It is expected that the implementation of the proposals to upgrade Pulau Ketam to become a service center servicing about 10,000 population will provide the impetus for a major infrastructural investments comprising of aesthetically designed jetties and land bridges, beautification works on shophouses and restaurants, refurbishment of State’s public sevices facilities, redevelopment of individual buildings and dwellings, improvement in utilities services (water supply, gas and electricity), and adequate provision for environmental services (solid waste and sewage services).

In accord with the overall plan, there has been a proposal to develop Pulau Ketam as a major centre for sea-food restaurant, possibly the biggest of such centre in Peninsular Malaysia. The place is strategically located at the estuary of Klang River Basin which has 4 million affluent populations hungry for an attractive well-package eco-tourism. In such a case, environmentally friendly hotels and homestay development should form a basic mainstay of tourism proposals.