NO PROPER JETTY FOR CRUISE PASSENGERS

Monday January 16, 2012

No proper jetty for cruise passengers

I REFER to K.T. Teh’s “Let’s make Malaysia ‘Best in Asia’ tour destination” (The Star, Jan 11).

I visit the Malacca jetty area almost every week as an agent for the cruise ship calling on Malacca.

Our efforts to get some improvements to the jetty from the state government to attract more tourists have not been fruitful.

The state government has arranged to dredge the river mouth towards the CIQ building that is under construction but the dredging will not in anyway assist in promoting tourism via sea.

There is no proper jetty for these passengers to disembark. The vessels drop anchor near the river mouth and tourists are transferred to the jetty which is congested with fishing/cargo boats and is an eyesore.

The state government has done nothing to improve this.

Though the jetty may be privately owned, the state government’s participation to transform the area is inevitable.

There is a lot of red tape over the dredging, and when we requested for assistance from the government for the jetty they are not able to assist due to the cost factor.

While the Tourism Ministry is doing the promotion on one side, the bureaucracy at the state level is pulling in the opposite direction.

How can tourism be expected to grow?

One officer even had the cheek to say: “We are not interested in your tourists”.

This kind of attitude will kill not boost the tourism industry.

It is high time the ministry steps in to check what is happening in Malacca and come up with a real action plan to boost the industry.

DRAGON MAN,

Port Klang.