A destination in its own right
A resident points to the site of Mersing Laguna. A fishing village at heart, the town will see dramatic changes soon. Pic by Ikhwan Muhammad
TO most outsiders, Mersing is little more than a place where they take a few hours of rest en route to the many islands in the South China Sea or the Endau Rompin National Park. Others simply make a stopover for a meal or to refuel their petrol tanks.
Tourism has not taken off in any big way in Mersing despite its strategic location on the east coast of the peninsula. After all these years, Mersing is still a semi-tourist town best known for its passenger boat jetty. It is still a fishing village at heart and has yet to see signs of major economic development.
But things are about to change in this sleepy Johor coastal town, and dramatically at that. A newly- launched mammoth project has promised to turn it into a full-blown international tourist destination that is worth mentioning in the same breath as Gold Coast in Australia and Bali in Indonesia.
It is an ambitious RM22 billion high-end international eco-tourism undertaking on 2,000 acres of reclaimed land. Carrying the commercial name of Mersing Laguna, the development will be implemented in phases over the next seven years. It is one of the nine projects announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to be implemented in the East Coast Economic Region that straddles Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang and the northern Johor district.
"We want to turn Mersing into a premier tourism product and use it to leverage on eco-tourism," Ungku Safian Abdullah, president and chief executive officer of master developer Radiant Starfish Development Bhd, said last week.
"It has the potential to be a high-niche global tourist resort similar to Gold Coast and Bali."
Essentially, the plan is to create three new islands off Mersing which will be linked by bridges to the mainland. A total of 22 five-star boutique hotels will be built on these islands with three more on the mainland. There will also be 4,000 villas, marina facilities and other commercial development including a theme park.
The pessimists could be forgiven for being sceptical about the entire endeavour because RM22 billion is not a small sum, and elevating a fishing village into the region's next tourism centre is by no means easy. But last week's signing of agreements between Radiant Starfish and its four partners should give the impression to those present, or the majority of them at least, that the project is both making sense and workable.
For a start, it is not something out of the blue, but a concept that has taken more than five years of detailed hydrographic, environmental impact and socio-economic studies.
It has the full backing of the state government under the leadership of Menteri Besar Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman, who feels that Mersing deserves an economic boost that would lift it from the backwaters of development.
Mersing Laguna has also earned the confidence of reputable foreign parties. One of the world's biggest dredging and reclamation companies, Chinese conglomerate Sinohydro Group Ltd, that has been involved in the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China and Bakun Dam in Sarawak, among others, is carrying out the reclamation work.
China-based theme park developer Shengrong International Group Co Ltd has agreed to build the international-class water-based theme park.
And word has it that international tour operators are already queuing up to run the boutique hotels and bring to Mersing their own groups of tourists.
"I have been selling this (project) for the past five years. I will not have to look for the tourists because the (hotel) investors who are very familiar with this kind of tourism will bring their own traffic," said Ungku Safian.
The beauty of a project on reclaimed land is that little or no private land will need to be acquired. Yet, to the locals, it will provide them with jobs and other economic spillovers in homestay, transportation, retail and food businesses.
Going by Ungku Safian's optimism, seven years down the road, the outsiders will find Mersing a lot more than just a transit point for refuelling or catching the boat to Sibu, Tioman and other islands.
New Straits Times 18/3/12
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