Whoops, I did it again . . . reacted dramatically to a relatively benign Jakarta Post article with another one of my Xanthippean tirades. Different topic this time. Here's the short article, and my characteristically long comment, which seems to have hit home, because sixty seconds after the Jakarta Post put it on their site, they CHANGED the headline of the article from:
"Bali called on to expand its export market"
to
"Bali expected to preserve creative industry"
They actually changed the headline after reading and posting my comments, which suggested that a pressure to expand exports to benefit Jakarta wouldn't go down well in Bali.
Anyhow, here's the article and my comment for your amusement, bemusement, bafflement.
Bali called on to expand its export market
Niken Prathivi , The Jakarta Post , Denpasar | Sat, 05/30/2009 10:34 AM | The Archipelago
As a province renowned for its strong tourism and art-based businesses, Bali has been told it must keep its creative industries alive to help the nation buffer the impacts of the ongoing global financial crisis.
The Trade Ministry's Director General of Foreign Trade, Diah Maulida, said Thursday that despite a decrease in the value of exports, by the end of this year Indonesia will have achieved a 2.5 percent growth in the economy while a large number of countries will have experience negative downturns.
Russia is anticipating negative growth of 6 percent while Singapore, Indonesia's closest neighbor, will suffer a 10 percent drop.
"By expanding its creative industries, Bali could help the nation reach such a target *2.5 percent*," Diah told a press conference on the sidelines of a three-day Foreign Trade Implementation Forum, which began Wednesday in Kuta.
Creative industries encompass 14 sectors, which are advertising, film production and photography, music, architecture, art, handicrafts, fashion, interactive gaming, entertainment, publishing and printing, computer based-service and software, television and radio and research and development.
"Bali has the potential to develop its handicraft, fashion and entertainment sectors," said Diah.
International markets, she said, required art-based accessories, especially for furbishing upcoming hotels and resorts.
"Countries in Africa and the Middle East are currently expanding their hotel businesses.
Those hotels need to be furnished and Bali is entirely capable of catering to that international market," she said.
To help the expanding creative sector, the government has agreed to provide assistance in funding, technology and marketing, Diah said.
COMMENT:
Diah's statements are very disturbing to me, for three different reasons.
First, she is insensitive to the current climate of thought and discussion in Bali, to her detriment. To call on the Balinese to step up their creative industries "to help the nation" is bound to ellicit a negative response here. General opinion among native Balinese holds that Bali is over-exploited by the nation, and gets precious little in return.
What the Balinese want to hear is how the nation plans to help Bali, not the other way around. Bali is a cash-cow for the nation. But the nation's investment in Bali's infrastructure, education, health care and other areas, is not proportionate to the island's economic contribution and potential for further contribution to the nation's economy. The Balinese are beginning to feel like their island is an abused workhorse being driven to its death.
Case in point (just one example - - there are many). Bali's infrastructure is in a regrettable state. A very visible example is the roads. Many of the most strategic roads for tourism are cratered, broken, chronically flooded and far overdue for repairs. They are also inadequate for the burden of traffic and have become horrifically congested. Not only are existing roads in a terrible state, there are simply not enough roads on the island to support the current level of economic activity.
The main route from the Kuta/Denpasar area to Tanah Lot Temple is among the worst. Plied daily by thousands of tour busses, vans and cars, this route also gives access to the scenic surfing beaches of the Canggu area, the Bali Nirwana Golf Club (Indonesia's best course), and to the hometowns of a large number of workers in the tourism sector who commute into the Kuta area daily (mostly on motorbikes).
Tourists are jolted and jarred, jammed up in traffic, hooted at and horrified in their hour-long journey to Tanah Lot, which should take only fifteen minutes, given the distance covered. The holes along this route have caused innumerable accidents during the past year, some involving tourists. With holes up to several meters across, and many 50cm deep or more, this is not surprising.
The appalling condition of the route described above is not unique by any means. Many, if not most, strategic routes for tourism and economic activity on the island are in similar condition. Traffic and bad roads have become the number one complaint of travellers to Bali, even overtaking complaints about the garbage problem.
The roads are just one area of infrastructure where the nation's investment in Bali is dramatically out of proportion to the island's economic activity and contribution to the nation. Education, sanitation, waste management, health care, and electricity are among the others. A recent article, spread far and wide around the world, reported that quality investment is spurning Bali, because investors cannot be assured of a basic, reliable supply of electricity. Just last night the island went black, an embarrassing and hazardous event, that was reported internationally by the Jakarta Post within one hour of the incident, putting it up front and centre on search pages and news sites around the world. No explanation or proposed remedy to prevent a reoccurence has been heard yet.
I won't even begin to get into the other areas of under-investment in Bali now. There are plenty of resources and reports elsewhere. My main point is simply that it looks like the nation is trying to squeeze every last drop of cash out of this island, and doing a very poor job of maintaining and reinvesting in it's little cash cow. The cow may run dry, or simply collapse as a result. Diah's statement, is rather like caning an underfed and neglected cow and demanding it give more milk, when a better way to achieve that outcome would be proper care and feeding of the cow so it survives to give good quality milk daily for a long time.
Second, Diah's statement raises hackles here by its discriminatory tone in terms of Bali's potentials. She lists 14 sectors of creative industry, and then declares that Bali has potential to develop only three: handicrafts, fashion and entertainment. This "assigns" to Bali three of the most exploitative sectors of the 14.
Handicrafts is an industry that typically runs on price, demanding cheap home labour (often children), and produces low added-value products, which disincentivise investment in training, education and holistic economic development. It's generally about sweatshops, but without the shops. The people are at home, or sitting on the dirty floors of squalid little workshops in small groups, without the benefit of normal legal protections granted to more formal fields of labour.
Fashion is perhaps an industry where Bali does have some bright potential for positive development. But in reality, what the fashion industry tends to mean in Indonesia is - - sweatshops - - and also informal, exploited labour like in the handicrafts industry, sewing beads and sequins on piece goods to eke out a living, with jobs going to the lowest bidder. This market structure ensures big profits for the foreign traders, and exploitation of the people who do the tedious handwork. Again, there is no incentive here for training, education, or balanced development.
If Diah meant "fashion", as in fashion design, international fashion shows, or promotion and "up-marketing" of Bali's indigenous textile traditions, well, that does offer a glimmer of hope. But it requires intelligent investment, not least of all in expertise and marketing. And what kind of a fashion capital can Bali become if its infrastructure remains unsupportive?
Entertainment is a sector that in Bali feels even more exploitative than the other two sectors mentioned above. What is meant here by entertainment in relation to Bali is surely two things. First, it's traditional dance, drama and music, which (again) relies on exploitation of informal labourers who are underpaid and undersupported. Entertainment here also means big "entertainment complexes" like the failing or failed GWK park, or the misguided and stumbling Klapa entertainment complex at Pecatu. Entertainment also means nightclubs, discos, karaoke bars and (pardon me), prostitution. All of these things I have just mentioned also often mean social degradation, crime, drugs, gangsters, black marketeers - - and sometimes sex tourism, paedophilia, and human trafficking. And it's pertinent to ask, how can the entertainment sector thrive, when its ubiquitous lubricant - - alcoholic drink - - is taxed at a ridiculous level, discouraging both investment and arrivals in Bali?
By "assigning" handicrafts, fashion and entertainment to Bali, Diah excludes Bali from the more promising, sustainable and advanced sectors of advertising, film, photography, music, architecture, art, publishing, printing, computer-based services, software, television, radio, and research and development. Frankly that feels like a fine slap in the face. Perhaps it IS a fine slap in the face. Perhaps it's a wake-up call, a beneficial slap in the face - - the kind of slap one administers to an incoherent person who has collapsed on the sidewalk to "bring them to" so that their condition can be determined and proper care and support provided to them.
Third and finally, Diah's statement rubs me the wrong way for reasons related to personal experience and personal frustrations. She calls on Bali to provide accessories and furniture for upcoming hotels and resorts, especially in Africa and the Middle East. Alright then. Let's just see how easy that is to do that in Bali.
One of the small businesses I am involved with is a sourcing agency, which provides accessories and furniture to ultra-high-end projects in the USA, Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean. Business is booming. But we cannot keep up with it or deliver competitive product and service. Why? The quality of available human resources here makes it extremely difficult.
To serve this type of client, a business needs a skilled team to manage the processes, the marketing, the shipping, the communications, the administration and the finances. Finding those skills in Bali is almost impossible. So I have been building those skills in this organisation from the inside, working slowly, from the ground up, hiring and training people, and giving them unlimited opportunities to learn languages, computer skills, and business management. But it's still not enough. It's too little, too late. We are failing to serve our customers well and to take advantage of the opportunities available to us. It is sad. And confusing.
While the Balinese complain about foreigners and outsiders coming and taking all of the prize jobs, where are the Balinese with the skills to fill them? There clearly are not enough. Which points once again to the chronic lack of investment in education, training, health care, transportation and everything else required to build holistically, a valuable workforce capable of achieving a better standard of living for the people in the long term.
My last statements are bound to ellicit many angry comments. And I understand that. But in order to improve the quality of life here, we need to see things as they are. So I stand by my statements above, in principal. Here's one reason I feel my statements are supportable.
Every day I read the Bali Post front to back. Almost every day, I take a red pen and review the Help Wanted ads. The number of Help Wanted ads is high, and the trend, despite economic downturn in general, has been upward. There are jobs. Lots of jobs. Good jobs. Vacant jobs.
I take the red pen, and circle every ad that requires English. Then I circle every ad that requires computer skills. The whole page becomes a field of red. Many ads are circled twice, once for English, and once for computer skills. Meanwhile, almost all of the uncircled ads are jobs few people would want. Low-wage domestic jobs, laundry worker, counter sales, door-to-door sales, call-out massage girls, entry level bengkel work. Jobs involving low-to-middle skill levels are filled (no ads for those). Jobs requiring middle-to-higher skill levels are not. There are lots and lots of ads looking for specific skills, published again and again, by reputable and thriving companies (often with a note of urgency), desperately seeking people who can keyboard accurately, use Excel, Word, email, MYOB, do coding, use web apps, have SEO skills, CAD talents, speak English functionally, handle HR duties, and so on and so on.
Talking with other foreign and Indonesian entrepreneurs and management, I find the same story over and over again. Almost everyone is desperately looking for skilled team members, and there aren't enough skills to go around. This is something that calls for action, and a long-term commitment from the nation. To ratchet up education and training so the local work force can respond to opportunities is a much better approach than to demand that the Balinese make baskets faster, sew sequins neater, and dance harder to make more money for Jakarta.
Yes, that's a bit histrionic of me to put it that way. And perhaps unfair.
So, to make a reasonably polite exit to this impromptu essay, I feel greatly heartened by Diah's closing remarks. "To help the expanding creative sector, the government has agreed to provide assistance in funding, technology and marketing."
If only there was more investment in Bali for infrastructure, education, training, health care, and other essential areas - - investment proportional to the cash milked from the cow - - then maybe Diah's good intentions could help foster a better life for the people of Bali, sustainably.
"Bali called on to expand its export market"
to
"Bali expected to preserve creative industry"
They actually changed the headline after reading and posting my comments, which suggested that a pressure to expand exports to benefit Jakarta wouldn't go down well in Bali.
Anyhow, here's the article and my comment for your amusement, bemusement, bafflement.
Bali called on to expand its export market
Niken Prathivi , The Jakarta Post , Denpasar | Sat, 05/30/2009 10:34 AM | The Archipelago
As a province renowned for its strong tourism and art-based businesses, Bali has been told it must keep its creative industries alive to help the nation buffer the impacts of the ongoing global financial crisis.
The Trade Ministry's Director General of Foreign Trade, Diah Maulida, said Thursday that despite a decrease in the value of exports, by the end of this year Indonesia will have achieved a 2.5 percent growth in the economy while a large number of countries will have experience negative downturns.
Russia is anticipating negative growth of 6 percent while Singapore, Indonesia's closest neighbor, will suffer a 10 percent drop.
"By expanding its creative industries, Bali could help the nation reach such a target *2.5 percent*," Diah told a press conference on the sidelines of a three-day Foreign Trade Implementation Forum, which began Wednesday in Kuta.
Creative industries encompass 14 sectors, which are advertising, film production and photography, music, architecture, art, handicrafts, fashion, interactive gaming, entertainment, publishing and printing, computer based-service and software, television and radio and research and development.
"Bali has the potential to develop its handicraft, fashion and entertainment sectors," said Diah.
International markets, she said, required art-based accessories, especially for furbishing upcoming hotels and resorts.
"Countries in Africa and the Middle East are currently expanding their hotel businesses.
Those hotels need to be furnished and Bali is entirely capable of catering to that international market," she said.
To help the expanding creative sector, the government has agreed to provide assistance in funding, technology and marketing, Diah said.
COMMENT:
Diah's statements are very disturbing to me, for three different reasons.
First, she is insensitive to the current climate of thought and discussion in Bali, to her detriment. To call on the Balinese to step up their creative industries "to help the nation" is bound to ellicit a negative response here. General opinion among native Balinese holds that Bali is over-exploited by the nation, and gets precious little in return.
What the Balinese want to hear is how the nation plans to help Bali, not the other way around. Bali is a cash-cow for the nation. But the nation's investment in Bali's infrastructure, education, health care and other areas, is not proportionate to the island's economic contribution and potential for further contribution to the nation's economy. The Balinese are beginning to feel like their island is an abused workhorse being driven to its death.
Case in point (just one example - - there are many). Bali's infrastructure is in a regrettable state. A very visible example is the roads. Many of the most strategic roads for tourism are cratered, broken, chronically flooded and far overdue for repairs. They are also inadequate for the burden of traffic and have become horrifically congested. Not only are existing roads in a terrible state, there are simply not enough roads on the island to support the current level of economic activity.
The main route from the Kuta/Denpasar area to Tanah Lot Temple is among the worst. Plied daily by thousands of tour busses, vans and cars, this route also gives access to the scenic surfing beaches of the Canggu area, the Bali Nirwana Golf Club (Indonesia's best course), and to the hometowns of a large number of workers in the tourism sector who commute into the Kuta area daily (mostly on motorbikes).
Tourists are jolted and jarred, jammed up in traffic, hooted at and horrified in their hour-long journey to Tanah Lot, which should take only fifteen minutes, given the distance covered. The holes along this route have caused innumerable accidents during the past year, some involving tourists. With holes up to several meters across, and many 50cm deep or more, this is not surprising.
The appalling condition of the route described above is not unique by any means. Many, if not most, strategic routes for tourism and economic activity on the island are in similar condition. Traffic and bad roads have become the number one complaint of travellers to Bali, even overtaking complaints about the garbage problem.
The roads are just one area of infrastructure where the nation's investment in Bali is dramatically out of proportion to the island's economic activity and contribution to the nation. Education, sanitation, waste management, health care, and electricity are among the others. A recent article, spread far and wide around the world, reported that quality investment is spurning Bali, because investors cannot be assured of a basic, reliable supply of electricity. Just last night the island went black, an embarrassing and hazardous event, that was reported internationally by the Jakarta Post within one hour of the incident, putting it up front and centre on search pages and news sites around the world. No explanation or proposed remedy to prevent a reoccurence has been heard yet.
I won't even begin to get into the other areas of under-investment in Bali now. There are plenty of resources and reports elsewhere. My main point is simply that it looks like the nation is trying to squeeze every last drop of cash out of this island, and doing a very poor job of maintaining and reinvesting in it's little cash cow. The cow may run dry, or simply collapse as a result. Diah's statement, is rather like caning an underfed and neglected cow and demanding it give more milk, when a better way to achieve that outcome would be proper care and feeding of the cow so it survives to give good quality milk daily for a long time.
Second, Diah's statement raises hackles here by its discriminatory tone in terms of Bali's potentials. She lists 14 sectors of creative industry, and then declares that Bali has potential to develop only three: handicrafts, fashion and entertainment. This "assigns" to Bali three of the most exploitative sectors of the 14.
Handicrafts is an industry that typically runs on price, demanding cheap home labour (often children), and produces low added-value products, which disincentivise investment in training, education and holistic economic development. It's generally about sweatshops, but without the shops. The people are at home, or sitting on the dirty floors of squalid little workshops in small groups, without the benefit of normal legal protections granted to more formal fields of labour.
Fashion is perhaps an industry where Bali does have some bright potential for positive development. But in reality, what the fashion industry tends to mean in Indonesia is - - sweatshops - - and also informal, exploited labour like in the handicrafts industry, sewing beads and sequins on piece goods to eke out a living, with jobs going to the lowest bidder. This market structure ensures big profits for the foreign traders, and exploitation of the people who do the tedious handwork. Again, there is no incentive here for training, education, or balanced development.
If Diah meant "fashion", as in fashion design, international fashion shows, or promotion and "up-marketing" of Bali's indigenous textile traditions, well, that does offer a glimmer of hope. But it requires intelligent investment, not least of all in expertise and marketing. And what kind of a fashion capital can Bali become if its infrastructure remains unsupportive?
Entertainment is a sector that in Bali feels even more exploitative than the other two sectors mentioned above. What is meant here by entertainment in relation to Bali is surely two things. First, it's traditional dance, drama and music, which (again) relies on exploitation of informal labourers who are underpaid and undersupported. Entertainment here also means big "entertainment complexes" like the failing or failed GWK park, or the misguided and stumbling Klapa entertainment complex at Pecatu. Entertainment also means nightclubs, discos, karaoke bars and (pardon me), prostitution. All of these things I have just mentioned also often mean social degradation, crime, drugs, gangsters, black marketeers - - and sometimes sex tourism, paedophilia, and human trafficking. And it's pertinent to ask, how can the entertainment sector thrive, when its ubiquitous lubricant - - alcoholic drink - - is taxed at a ridiculous level, discouraging both investment and arrivals in Bali?
By "assigning" handicrafts, fashion and entertainment to Bali, Diah excludes Bali from the more promising, sustainable and advanced sectors of advertising, film, photography, music, architecture, art, publishing, printing, computer-based services, software, television, radio, and research and development. Frankly that feels like a fine slap in the face. Perhaps it IS a fine slap in the face. Perhaps it's a wake-up call, a beneficial slap in the face - - the kind of slap one administers to an incoherent person who has collapsed on the sidewalk to "bring them to" so that their condition can be determined and proper care and support provided to them.
Third and finally, Diah's statement rubs me the wrong way for reasons related to personal experience and personal frustrations. She calls on Bali to provide accessories and furniture for upcoming hotels and resorts, especially in Africa and the Middle East. Alright then. Let's just see how easy that is to do that in Bali.
One of the small businesses I am involved with is a sourcing agency, which provides accessories and furniture to ultra-high-end projects in the USA, Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean. Business is booming. But we cannot keep up with it or deliver competitive product and service. Why? The quality of available human resources here makes it extremely difficult.
To serve this type of client, a business needs a skilled team to manage the processes, the marketing, the shipping, the communications, the administration and the finances. Finding those skills in Bali is almost impossible. So I have been building those skills in this organisation from the inside, working slowly, from the ground up, hiring and training people, and giving them unlimited opportunities to learn languages, computer skills, and business management. But it's still not enough. It's too little, too late. We are failing to serve our customers well and to take advantage of the opportunities available to us. It is sad. And confusing.
While the Balinese complain about foreigners and outsiders coming and taking all of the prize jobs, where are the Balinese with the skills to fill them? There clearly are not enough. Which points once again to the chronic lack of investment in education, training, health care, transportation and everything else required to build holistically, a valuable workforce capable of achieving a better standard of living for the people in the long term.
My last statements are bound to ellicit many angry comments. And I understand that. But in order to improve the quality of life here, we need to see things as they are. So I stand by my statements above, in principal. Here's one reason I feel my statements are supportable.
Every day I read the Bali Post front to back. Almost every day, I take a red pen and review the Help Wanted ads. The number of Help Wanted ads is high, and the trend, despite economic downturn in general, has been upward. There are jobs. Lots of jobs. Good jobs. Vacant jobs.
I take the red pen, and circle every ad that requires English. Then I circle every ad that requires computer skills. The whole page becomes a field of red. Many ads are circled twice, once for English, and once for computer skills. Meanwhile, almost all of the uncircled ads are jobs few people would want. Low-wage domestic jobs, laundry worker, counter sales, door-to-door sales, call-out massage girls, entry level bengkel work. Jobs involving low-to-middle skill levels are filled (no ads for those). Jobs requiring middle-to-higher skill levels are not. There are lots and lots of ads looking for specific skills, published again and again, by reputable and thriving companies (often with a note of urgency), desperately seeking people who can keyboard accurately, use Excel, Word, email, MYOB, do coding, use web apps, have SEO skills, CAD talents, speak English functionally, handle HR duties, and so on and so on.
Talking with other foreign and Indonesian entrepreneurs and management, I find the same story over and over again. Almost everyone is desperately looking for skilled team members, and there aren't enough skills to go around. This is something that calls for action, and a long-term commitment from the nation. To ratchet up education and training so the local work force can respond to opportunities is a much better approach than to demand that the Balinese make baskets faster, sew sequins neater, and dance harder to make more money for Jakarta.
Yes, that's a bit histrionic of me to put it that way. And perhaps unfair.
So, to make a reasonably polite exit to this impromptu essay, I feel greatly heartened by Diah's closing remarks. "To help the expanding creative sector, the government has agreed to provide assistance in funding, technology and marketing."
If only there was more investment in Bali for infrastructure, education, training, health care, and other essential areas - - investment proportional to the cash milked from the cow - - then maybe Diah's good intentions could help foster a better life for the people of Bali, sustainably.