All gone, losses aplenty and ‘there is no point crying’
BUKIT MERTAJAM: The stench of rotting vegetables clung to the still morning air.
“No pictures! No names! The bank will look for us,” shouted a vegetable wholesaler in Padang Lalang near here when a team from The Star visited him.
The wholesaler feared that the financial institutions would go after him over his debts.
“We lost so much. I don’t even know how to count it,” he said.
“Our storehouse had never been flooded before. The water was up to the waist,” he added.
Only on Monday night did floodwaters in town recede fully, and only yesterday morning could the townsfolk begin cleaning up.
The town began about 130 years ago as a wet market, and is today a central wholesale market for Seberang Prai with scores of fresh produce distributors.
“Losses are in the millions of ringgit,” said Penang Vegetable Wholesalers Association chairman Datuk Kang Peng Weng.
“My own wholesale business suffered about RM150,000 in losses. I have been in this line for 30 years, and this is the first time my storehouses got flooded,” he said, tearing apart boxes of gingers contaminated by the flood.
Not far from Kang’s storehouse, a plastic packaging printer, who also did not want to be identified, said he would have to declare “a total loss”.
“All my printing machines, my servers are destroyed. There is nothing left that I can use for my business,” he added.
GT Two Tyre and Battery Service Centre owner Teh Chin Aik in Taman Desa Damai pulled apart his broken shutters yesterday morning and found a large striated snakehead fish ( haruan) still alive on his wet and muddy floor.
He freed the fish into a monsoon drain that was still filled with water.
His stock of tyres and rims are flood-proof, but Teh said he did not dare turn on any electrical equipment in his workshop.
“I hope they will work after they are completely dry. If not, I will need at least RM50,000 to buy all these equipment again,” he lamented.
As the townsfolk began the cleanup and assessed their losses yesterday, housewife Ruslina Ali, 38, was spotted laughing cheerily while cleaning her kampung house with her kids and husband, Mohamad Junaidi Desa, 44.
“We lost almost everything. And, when you lose that much, you must keep your semangat (spirits) up.
“My husband bought me a RM1,500 washing machine recently. I only used it a few times and now, it’s destroyed.
“We don’t know how to rebuild our home again, but there is no point crying,” she said. “And, it is useless to be sad.”