Kuantan Port readies itself to handle bauxite shipments in a 'sustainable' way

The Kuantan Port Consortium Sdn Bhd (KPC) says the port facilities have been upgraded to handle bauxite shipments if the government decides to lift the moratorium on mining in the state on December 31.

“KPC has spent a lot of money on improving facilities to ensure the situation does not go back to what it was,” said chief executive officer Datuk Khasbullah A. Kadir after flagging off KPC’s Give Day Out event on Saturday, November 3.

“We have four washing bays compared to one previously. We have adhered to government guidelines on bauxite stockpiling sites and transport at the port. We cleared our stockpiles in the first three months after the moratorium was imposed. Anyone who comes to the port can see the difference compared with early this year. Now we are waiting for directions from the government,” he said.

Khasbullah said the port was currently carrying out bauxite shipments from the stockpiles outside the port that were being cleared until recently.

The shipments of bauxite at the Port are now being carried out under the approval permits issued by Pahang's Natural Resources and Environment Ministry with a limit of between 300,000 and 400,000 tonnes per month, Khasbullah said. The volume of shipments handled by the port might go up once normal bauxite operations were resumed, he added.

The Kuantan Port handled bauxite shipments in the range of 3.4 and 3.6 million tonnes per month before the moratorium on bauxite mining began on January 15.

However, proper tests had to be carried out to determine the quantity of bauxite the port could handle without impacting the environment.

Pahang's bauxite mining industry and Kuantan Port authorities had come under fire for not paying adequate attention to unregulated bauxite mining, storage and transport, which caused massive damage to environment. The government had imposed a moratorium on bauxite mining in the state from Jan 15 to April 14. Later, it was extended thrice to July 15, September 14 and then finally to December 31.

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