I just thought of sharing my experience with all the readers on the Langkawi ferry accident which occured on the 24th Nov, as i was one of the passengers of the ill fated ferries. My family and i had decided to go on a holiday in Langkawi. We took Kenangan 6 from Kuala Kedah at 4.30pm heading towards Kuah. When the ferry left Kuala Kedah the wheather was fine but it turned ugly after about 45 minutes into the journey and by this time we were already in open sea.

 It started raining very heavily. The sea was rough and visibility was poor but the ferry kept speeding at the same pace as it started. At around 5:15pm our ferry suddenly dropped speed and seconds later there was a huge bang. Many of the passengers seated in the front deck were thrown of their seats but none were injured. There was panic everywhere as all passengers rushed for the life jackets thinking that the ferry would drown.

It came as a huge shock to me that there were only around 5 life jackets for children and we had more than 30 kids on board. This would mean that if the ferry had dunk, all the kids would have drowned.Even the adults had difficulties in wearing their jackets as none of them knew how to use it.  Around 15 minutes later the door to our ferry was opened and i thought that help was already there but to my surprise there were almost 10 injured passengers coupled with the others transfered into our ferry. I could see outside that there was another ferry which was severly damaged. Amongst those transfered there  was a small boy who was severely injured. His scull was visible as the skin had ripped off.

We had 2 doctors on board, 1 local from Ipoh and another from New Zealand and both of them tried to assist but guess what, the first aid box was half empty. There was nothing these two doctors could use to help the child. By this time the ferry was overloaded and panic was everywhere.  The ferry crew were untrained in handling emergency.

They did not know what to do. The ferry captain did not make any anouncement informing the passengers on what had happened and what we were into. All of us were left in the dark thinking that we were all going to drown. About 1:15 later an empty ferry arrived and the passengers started transfering and here again there were no proper evacuation procedures followed Everyone was rushing towards the door.  There was no one controling anything. After loading around 150 passengers the doors were shut leaving around 45 passengers back in the damaged ferry.

 To my surprise, amongst these 45 passengers there were 10 children. Soon later a marine police boat arrived and escorted us to Kuah Jetty. During this very slow and dreadful journey which took about 1:30 hour i walked up to the cockpit. and here i noticed that the radar system of the ferry was not working and this was actually the cause of the coalision. 

  The authorities would have answer us as to why help was despatched so slow? Why were the ferry crew not trained to handle emergency? Did the ferryy gone through proper maintanance procedures? On 25th November, newspaper reported that the Menteri Besar had instructed that names of ferry passengers must be taken before tickets are issued but on the 26th when i bought tickets back to Kuala Kedah, procedures were still not followed. We hope that the investigation report would be made public as we need to know what actually happened on that particular day and we would not want it o happen to anyone else. 

Darshan Singh

Director

NCCC