Penang south fishermen's future lies in the prospect of reclamation project – A response to The Asean Post’s article on Penang South Reclamation scheme

A recent article about Penang’s marine life in The Asean Post has given wrong impression about a reclamation proposal and the fisheries condition in the State. (‘Penang’s new islands will kill marine life,’ 23 June 2019)

I would like to provide facts to correct the article’s misleading portrayal of the matter.

Exaggeration of fishermen’s plight

The article states that “The proposed area for the artificial islands is currently the place where most fishermen around the state coastline live and work. Objections have come from this group of fishermen whose livelihoods and villages are threatened most by this project.” (Emphasis added)

This is wrong as the number of fishermen living in Barat Daya district, where the reclamation site is located, is 912 out of 2,905 registered fishermen in Penang. That means most of the fishermen are living at other coastline in the State, not at the reclamation site.

Besides exaggerating the number of fishermen staying near the reclamation site, the article also exaggerates their objections. More than 50 percent of the fishermen staying there actually support the reclamation project.

The approving voices of the fishermen who support the project is surprisingly neglected in the article.

Ignoring actual threat to marine life

The article’s single-minded criticism of the future threat to the marine life is absolutely blinded to the fact that marine life in the area is already depleting due to overfishing, even before a single grain of sand is dropped into the sea for reclamation.

Fisheries Department director-general Datuk Munir Mohd Nawi had acknowledged this matter late last year, that the depletion of fishes was due to overfishing. Of the 7,800 marine species around the world, 90 percent were fully fished or overfished.

In Penang, the destruction of sea bed at the reclamation site has been happening due to overfishing through destructive fishing method such as the usage of coastal seine nets locally known as ‘pukat tunda.’

Overfishing in Penang was so critical that in 2015 the fisheries department had to restrict the issuance of licence to fishing vessels, reducing them by 30 percent. This happened before any reclamation took place.  

Who caused overfishing? It was the fishermen. Definitely not the reclamation as the project hasn’t even started.

The Asean Post’s article highlighted the concern for marine life and livelihood of the fishermen while blinded to the fact that it was the latter that had destroyed the former, and conveniently blamed a reclamation proposal that hasn’t even begin.

Future of Penang south

The future of the southern part of Penang is in the successful implementation of the Penang South Reclamation scheme (PSR).

The project will create jobs for the fishermen in the overfished area. The two stakeholders’ engagement centres (‘Pusat Perkhidmatan Setempat Nelayan’) set up in the fishermen’s villages are already registering fishermen for jobs.

The PSR will also rejuvenate marine life in the destroyed sea bed through the installation of artificial reefs and eco-engineering, which is a proven mitigation method.

These and other effective action plans were already made public during the month-long display of the Environmental Impact Assessment report. Anyone who cares enough to write an article about these concerns related to the project shouldn’t have missed the executive summary.

The development on the reclaimed islands will expand the economic opportunities for the fishermen, improving their social mobility. The future of the southern fishermen lies in the prospect of the reclamation project.

Don't ignore Penang's middle working class! - A response to Al Jazeera’s article on Penang South Reclamation.

Al Jazeera’s recent article about Penang South Reclamation adds to the list of lopsided coverage about the project.

It is as if the future of the fishermen is all that matters in Penang. Such coverage completely ignores the huge middle working class in manufacturing and services sector in Penang. 

These sectors are the actual economic and social driver of the State, accounting for more than 94 percent of Penang’s GDP in 2017.

It is as if the severe deficit of 75,000 high-skilled jobs to cater to 174,000 Malaysians who graduate every year is irrelevant to the future of the next generation and their parents who worked tirelessly to pay for their children’s education. Should these unemployed graduates end up as fishermen?

It is as if the fact that Penang, as the second smallest state in Malaysia, produces 8 percent of the global back-end semiconductor output is not significant enough to convince media such as Al Jazeera that it is economically strategic and socially responsible for the State Government to leverage on what it does best to survive in an economically turbulent world.

When some of these media talk about the reclamation project, their celebrity are the fishermen. The total registered fishermen in Penang is less than 3,000, according to the data from Department of Fisheries. The fishermen who actually live around the reclamation site number at 912. And one rough estimate of the annual economic value of that area is RM136 million.

Penang’s electrical and electronic manufacturing sector alone contributes at least 300,000 jobs and more than RM18 billion in wages annually.

However, the fishermen get the limelight. They were collectively portrayed as “threatened” by the reclamation, side-lining those fishermen who support the project.

Not only the fishermen who support the reclamation are side-lined, the huge middle class in the manufacturing and services sector – the most vulnerable to the ongoing trade war and very likely to be out of job due to the imminent industrial revolution 4.0 and the emergence of artificial intelligence and automation, amounting to 800 million job loss worldwide by 2030 – is conveniently ignored.

The reclamation initiative by the State Government to expand the industrial zone to attract investors to create high-value job in order to sustain the majority of the population, amounts to 94 percent of the State's economy, is portrayed as a “threat” to the fishermen.

It seems that the 912 fishermen matter more to Al Jazeera. So, the State Government should just ignore the future of the huge middle working class and focus only on the fishermen?

It is not that the welfare of the affected fishermen is not important. The setting up of not one but two engagement centres (“Pusat Perkhidmatan Setempat Nelayan”) along the coastline of the reclamation site shows that the State Government is looking into their welfare. These centres have been collecting names of residents in the area for job replacement, providing practical help to the fisherman community. This effort is likewise side-lined by the Al Jazeera’s report.

Penang has moved on from being a backward fishermen village since the 1960s. It’s about time for Al Jazeera to catch up with the present Penang.

Transport policy needs updated theory – a reply to Ahmad Hilmy

I’m glad that my previous article on public transport policy has invited the response from Ahmad Hilmy, a transport expert from Universiti Sains Malaysia. He has marshalled a list of other transport experts to support his point that the construction of roads is the cause of increasing private vehicle usage.

However, the expertise that Ahmad has cited is a misapplication as those experts are dealing with different subject matter of a different era. For instance, they did not study the present Hong Kong like I did.

In fact, it is impossible for them to include the present Hong Kong in their study as some of them were writing their observation more than half a century ago.

The experts such as R. J. Smeed and J. G. Wardrop, whom Phil Goodwin relied on and cited approvingly by Ahmad, wrote their study in the early 1960s, before Hong Kong even started building their Mass Transit Railway.

These experts whom Ahmad referred to are limited by their era to incorporate the present Hong Kong into their study. Ahmad has access to Hong Kong’s public mobility scenario today, yet the USM expert prefers to stick to the obsolete observation. A disclaimer, a theory is not obsolete by the virtue of its age but by the emergence of new data that does not fit the theory.

Likewise, the studies by Petter Næss, Martin J. H. Mogridge, Synnøve Lyssand Sandberg, Adam Mann, Matthew Beck, Michiel Bliemer, and Susan Handy, cited by Ahmad – not a single one of them examined Hong Kong.

The point I’m arguing is that the cause of increasing private vehicle usage in a city is not due to construction of new roads, but the growth of population and capital flow.

This is most obvious in the case of Hong Kong, a city with 90% of public transport usage, and yet they are still building more roads to improve the dispersal network.

This ranks Hong Kong among the least car-dependent cities in the world. And Hong Kong has been building new roads, spending RM45.5 billion on roads construction recently. A robust theory must be able to explain this.

If building roads will lead to more private vehicle usage, then why is Hong Kong’s public transport still so high despite the fact that they have been building new roads all these years? The fact that it did means that the supply of new roads was not the determinant factor, and there were other factors involved.

If supply of roads will increase private vehicle usage and reduce public transport usage, then Hong Kong’s 90% public transport usage should not have happened – but it has. And the theory that Ahmad holds so dear cannot explain this.

And, let’s assume for argument’s sake, that the supply of roads will indeed increase private car usage, then we have to ask, why would Hong Kong want that? It does not make policy sense for Hong Kong to do that, unless of course the theory is wrong, which it is.

The most probable explanation is that the cause of increasing private vehicle usage in a city is not due to construction of new roads, but the growth of population and capital flow.

When people who can afford private cars move into the city, and people in the city become more able to afford private cars, that’s when there is an increase in private car usage and an increase in traffic jams despite the availability of good public transport. 

Hong Kong was able to increase public transport usage without being affected by the supply of new roads because of capital control (for e.g. reduce affordability of private vehicle ownership and usage, while increase affordability of public transport) and employing an effective multidimensional approach to transport policy that simultaneously improves traffic dispersal network and public transport infrastructure to cater to the growing population.

This is why the city continues to build new roads while still able to maintain high public transport usage.