Bund Road (Jalan Ban), Batu Maung

Bund Road, Batu Maung, Penang (11 February 2019)

Bund Road Click to hear

, also called Jalan Ban, is a road through the wetlands skirting the Penang International Airport. It provides access to the village of Batu Maung.

The Bund Road was created around 1977, following the extension of the airport runway which cut access for the village. At that time, I was growing up in Batu Maung. My late father was one of the village leaders who lobbied for the creation of Bund Road.

When it was first created, Bund Road was just a narrow road which, as its name suggest, was built on a bund over the wetlands. Only one car can pass through at one time, so bays were created at regular intervals for cars to pass each other from either sides. There were three wooden bridges along the road to allow the passage of tide water through the mangrove swamp on one side of the road, and the marshland on the other.

By the mid 1980's, further reclamation of land along the Bayan Lepas coast created the fourth phase of the Bayan Lepas Industrial Zone - at the expense of wetlands and mangrove swamps which were a habitat of macaques, monitor lizards, many species of birds, crabs and fish.

The northern side of Bund Road runs along Sungai Keluang, a river highly contaminated by industrial waste. Until some years ago, Sungai Keluang take on a different colour every day, due to the paint and dyes being discharged into it by a nearby fabric factory. Luckily that has come to pass, but it still remains a very polluted river. Recently (August 2010), there was a campaign to rehabilitate the river by throwing into it mudballs enriched with effective micro-organisms. It was part of the "A Million Apologies to Mother Earth" programme.