Attention turns to ASEAN in Maluku

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Ambon | Sat, 10/09/2010 11:50 AM

Hundreds of young people, activists and local officials attended a workshop on ASEAN here Friday, with many throwing questions and communicating their expectations to ASEAN officials and ambassadors on whether the grouping can help raise prosperity in their area.

Maluku residents really used the rare opportunity of directly asking Japanese and New Zealand ambassadors for ASEAN, both of whom are speakers at the workshop held by the Foreign Ministry to familiarize people here with ASEAN, to guarantee that through the grouping’s mechanism the countries can invest more in the province.

“Dear ambassadors, would you please guarantee that more investment from your countries will be put here in our area? This will be a concrete result from ASEAN for us,” Jos Polnaya, chairman of Maluku Businesspeople Association told the two ambassadors.

Most of them nodded to ideas of bringing in more investment to help reduce the province’s high unemployment.

“We don’t need big ideas. We need specific programs that can create jobs for us or help our problems. You see, Maluku is the third poorest province in the country so we badly need support,” Arsal Rizal, a student of the Maluku’s State Islamic Institute, said.

While acknowledging that Maluku has huge potential in various fields, including the energy sector, fishery and tourism, New Zealand Ambassador David Taylor said that Maluku themselves must guarantee social stability and security before hoping to attract more foreign investment trickling down to the province.

“I have talked with Maluku Governor [K.A. Ralahalu] about possibilities of increasing New Zealand’s presence in the province,” he said.

Japan Ambassador Takio Yamada said that JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) has been back to support Maluku in its development, especially helping the province achieve better infrastructure to be able to connect with other areas in Indonesia and ASEAN countries.

Former Indonesian ambassador to Australia Sabam Siagian dismissed participants’ pessimism on ASEAN’s lack of benefits to Indonesia and Maluku in particular.

“For more than 40 years ASEAN has provided Indonesia and the region, including Maluku, a environment of stability and peace. This stable political and security conditions have enabled us to conduct economic development,” he said.

Foreign Ministry Director General for ASEAN Affairs said that a blueprint of maritime connectivity — which will connect areas in Maluku by sea — were ready.

“Maluku is part of ASEAN’s eastern part so we need to connect it with the rest of the region. We will build 42 seaports in the eastern part of Indonesia as part of the maritime connectivity by 2015,” he said.

Sabam said that with such infrastructure ready for Maluku, there was a big chance that the province would get more investment from outside.

Still, many others expect that ASEAN and its partners can focus on raising quality of human resources of the province’s officials and providing more scholarships to students here to study abroad.

“Give scholarships to just 10 of our students every year to study in your respective country,” said John Ruhulessin of the Maluku’s Protestant Church.

Both New Zealand and Japan ambassadors promised that they would give attention to students from Maluku.

“We expect more applicants from this province so that we can provide more scholarships,” Taylor said.