2007, Indonesia stop sending maids to Saudi Arabia

Indonesia is looking to stop sending its nationals to work as maids abroad by 2017, under a "roadmap" it is drawing up to reform and formalise its domestic worker sector. Under the Domestic Worker Roadmap 2017, it wants to ensure maids are treated like other workers when they work abroad - earning minimum wages, getting leave and working fixed hours, for example. The plan is part of a larger aim to raise the skills of the thousands of Indonesians going overseas to work, according to the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry.

If it is carried out, however, it could mean a massive shortage of maids for places like Singapore and Malaysia, both of which rely heavily on domestic workers from Indonesia. Indonesians account for almost half of Singapore's 200,000-plus maids, and 80 per cent of Malaysia's 350,000 maids.

"Under the roadmap, we target zero sending out of domestic maids," Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar was quoted by news reports as saying yesterday. He acknowledged, however, that the task would be a challenging one, as most Indonesians seeking jobs abroad are low-skilled.

Some criticised the idea for being difficult to implement. The roadmap comes amid ongoing efforts by Jakarta to address maid abuse abroad.

In 2009, Indonesia banned maids from going to Malaysia following a spate of abuse cases. The ban was lifted last year after Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur hammered out an agreement on a slew of measures to better protect maids working in Malaysia. Jakarta was also reported to be reviewing which countries it will allow maids to work in.

About 650,000 Indonesians leave home every year to work as maids abroad, many of them from East Java and West Nusa Tenggara provinces. Under the roadmap being drawn up, Jakarta could require host countries to spell out job specifications for maids clearly.

"They should be placed in specific positions such as cook, housekeeper or caregiver," Mr Muhaimin was quoted by Bernama as saying. He added that these workers should also enjoy the usual rights that their formal counterparts get, such as predetermined working hours, leave, minimum wages and "social guarantees". But the minister also acknowledged that Jakarta would have to deal with several challenges when implementing the plan, including providing alternative jobs in Indonesia. Some 45 per cent of the country's 120 million-strong workforce have no more than primary school education, the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry noted.

Mr Muhaimin said the government was working to enhance the skills and competency levels of the country's workers in the industrial and creative economic sectors. Critics, however, said the roadmap was unworkable. 

Activist Syaiful Anas at the Jakarta-based Migrant Care, a non-governmental group that looks out for migrant workers, said the government should improve the protection of maids instead of trying to stop them from going overseas to work. The plan, he charged, contradicts a recent statement by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that Indonesia recognises maids as belonging to a proper profession.

"It's hard to believe Muhaimin made such statements.. . we all know there are still many who need to be maids," he told The Straits Times. Mr Rusjdi Basalamah, who owns and runs an agency that sends maids overseas, also doubted that the plan would work. "We now have a moratorium in place on the sending of maids to certain Middle Eastern countries, but many have still gone there illegally and the government could not do anything about it," he said.

Redenominate Rupiah and viability Indonesia economic

Draft legislation to redenominate Indonesia's currency is expected to gain momentum this year as lawmakers and monetary authorities push to drop the last three zeros from the nominal value of the rupiah. While the paper change will be largely cosmetic, analysts are divided on whether a redenomination could spark inflation and sow confusion among the public. 

The rupiah currently trades at 9,200 to the US dollar and is the second-lowest priced currency in the world, trailing only the Vietnamese dong. The rupiah collapsed amid the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis and despite economic and financial recovery still trades at a fraction of its pre-crisis value. 

Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said last month that the government was prepared to submit the draft law to the House of Representatives (DPR) for approval. The central bank, Bank Indonesia, has backed the move for various reasons, including the need to simplify accounting standards for transactions that now often exceed trillions of rupiah to the national pride that will be supposedly restored through a lower nominal currency value. 

If the bill is passed, as is expected, Bank Indonesia has said it will need one to two years to introduce the concept to the public and explain how to adapt accounting and information systems. During the proposed transition period, prices of goods would be labelled with both the old and new rupiah rates. Old notes would later be recalled and replaced by new notes where one rupiah would be equivalent to 1,000 of the old bills, according to the proposed plan. 

Certain financial analysts wonder if redenomination could be used to mask a devaluation of the currency to improve export competitiveness. If so, the policy motivation isn't abundantly apparent: Indonesian gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6.5% last year, up from 6.1% in 2010. That represented the fastest growth clip seen since 1996, the year before the Asian financial crisis hit and bankrupted the national coffers. GDP growth is projected to hit 6.3% this year. 

In December, Fitch Ratings was the first of the three major credit agencies to raise Indonesia's sovereign rating from junk status to BBB minus, based on the country's steady economic growth, low debt and strong macroeconomic position. The upgrade represented the first time Indonesia has achieved investment grade status since the economy collapsed during the 1997-98 financial crisis. 

Moody's followed suit this week, raising Indonesia's rating from debt to investment grade. The credit rating agency said Indonesia's cyclical resilience to large external shocks pointed to sustainably high trend growth over the medium term. 

"A more favorable assessment of Indonesia's economic strength is underpinned by gains in investment spending, improved prospects for infrastructure development following key policy reforms, and a well-managed financial system," Moody's said in a public statement. 

Fundamental strengths

The rupiah was relatively stable against the US dollar during last year, a troubling economic and financial period around the world, with the local unit trading between 8,500-9,000 to the greenback. 

That stability would seem to indicate that the proposed redenomination plan is not being driven by urgent economic problems, as has been the case in the past. Inflation was a manageable 3.79% in December, marking a 20-month low, although there are indications that exports are slowing amid economic turbulence in Europe and the United States and slowing growth in China. 

Bank Indonesia deputy governor Budi Rochadi has acknowledged that a redenomination of the rupiah would be "disastrous" if the transition was attempted during a period of high inflation. He has said that three requirements must be met to redenominate successfully, namely a stable economic environment, low inflation and a government guarantee of price stability. He has said that all three conditions are currently and securely in place. 

Mika Martumpal, a currency analyst at Commonwealth Bank based in Jakarta, believes that the redenomination plan carries few economic risks. 

"It's not an overnight change. Bank Indonesia has planned to have a transition period that may run for years in which both currencies - existing rupiah and new rupiah - are accepted as legal tender. Consequently, the public will have time to accept the new currency," he said. 

Martumpal notes that Turkey dropped five zeroes from the lira and had two currencies in circulation for four years before dropping the word "new" from the replacement currency in 2009. Turkey has often been cited as a success in using redenomination to fight inflation and simplify economic transactions that were previously denominated in terms of billions, trillions and even quadrillions, Martumpal notes. 

The key to avoiding a sudden currency devaluation during redenomination is public education, according to Johannes Ginting, a market analyst at Monex Investindo Futures. "Preparing the public to accept the new rupiah will take time. During the transition period, prices of goods have to be clearly marked with two currencies to ensure that psychologically people will understand that the value of their money has not dropped," he said. 

Traumatic past 

Managing those perceptions, however, may be easier said than done. An older generation of Indonesians remembers having the value of their savings drastically reduced through currency redenomination schemes implemented in 1950, 1956 and 1966. The first, in 1950, saw then finance minister Syarifuddin Prawiranegara order the public to literally tear in half all of the notes they held denominated over five rupiah. 

The left portion of a torn bill was valid as legal tender but worth only half the pre-torn bill's original amount. The right portion of the torn unit was no longer valid but could be exchanged for government bonds - valued far less than the money's original face value. 

The policy aimed to reduce public purchasing power, counter hyperinflation and pay off then-spiraling national debt. While the policy's success in dampening inflation was temporary, the move managed to drastically reduce the quantity of money in circulation and replaced the bills issued by the colonial Dutch administration. 

In 1959, Indonesia again sought to reduce the amount of money in circulation and contain hyperinflation. A presidential decree acted to drop one zero off all 500 and 1,000 rupiah notes, an unexpected move announced on the radio that effectively reduced the value of the currency by 90% overnight. Those ham-fisted interventions collapsed the value of the rupiah, which fell from 45 to the US dollar in 1955 to 35,000 by 1965. 

An even more radical change took place in 1965 to curb inflation that then ran as high as 650% Then president and independence hero Sukarno, whose central bank over-printed bank notes to finance political prestige projects, ordered the public to exchange their old 1,000 rupiah notes for new one rupiah notes. The move drove prices even higher as Indonesians ditched cash for gold, goods and other assets. 

Indonesia is now in better technocratic hands, but policymakers still feel obliged to play down that economic history. The proposed redenomination plan, Bank Indonesia officials have emphasized, is wholly different from the schemes of the past. Central bank governor Darmin Nasution has repeatedly said that the purchasing power of the rupiah will remain the same, despite dropping three zeroes from its nominal value. 

Still some local analysts and business leaders suspect a hidden agenda and have referred to lingering "trauma" among older Indonesians when discussing the potential downsides of the redenomination plan. 

"This has been done back in the president Sukarno era," said Sofyan Wanandi, general chairman of the Indonesian Business Association (Apindo), in a recent interview. "However it was not fruitful. Instead society endured trauma."

The island of New Guinea - the black island like black skin the people of New Guinea

The year 2011 was a tumultuous one for the island of New Guinea, the world's second-largest and perhaps most politically divided island. Papua New Guinea (PNG), the independent country on the island's eastern half, suffered from a four-month political standoff that was at least temporarily resolved in late December. 

On the island's western half, consisting of two Indonesian provinces, what started out as a strike over wages at the Grasberg mine spiraled into four months of protests which fueled a revival of the Papuan independence movement. While relative peace had been restored on both sides of the island by year's end, lasting stability will depend on a number of mutable factors in the year ahead. 

The key figure in the PNG political crisis - and also the key figure in the country since its independence - is Sir Michael Somare. Somare headed the first "indigenous" government from 1972-1975 before PNG acquired official independence from Australia in 1975. He was then PNG's prime minister from 1975-1980, 1982-1985, and again from 2002 until June 2011. Somare's family announced his retirement from politics last June due to ill health and he left the country for Singapore for three months to recover from heart surgery. 

Sam Abal became the acting prime minister while Somare was recuperating out of country, but was ousted on August 2 in favor of Peter O'Neill, the head of the opposition People's National Congress Party, when 73 pro-O'Neill members of the 109-member parliament declared the government legally vacant and elected O'Neill as prime minister. Parliament then passed retroactive legislation formally recognizing O'Neill as the premier. 

After returning to PNG, Somare challenged the legality of what he termed a "bloodless coup" to the Supreme Court. The court then had to decide which of the two competing prime ministers - Somare or O'Neill - had the right to power and whether Somare's or O'Neill's governor general, police commissioner, and cabinet could rightly rule. In a hotly contested 3-2 decision, the court held that the election to install O'Neill as prime minister was unconstitutional. 

On December 14, Governor General Michael Ogio swore Somare and his cabinet into power, but in response the O'Neill loyalist dominated parliament voted to suspend Ogio and chose Speaker of Parliament Jeffrey Nape as his replacement. Nape swore in O'Neill in as prime minister later in the day of December 14. O'Neill had extra police flown into the capital of Port Moresby to take control of government assets, including the Government Printing Office, Treasury, and Government House while Somare's faction occupied other government offices. 

The stand-off and potential for violence threatened to spark a crisis, one with geostrategic implications in light of intensifying competition between Chinese and American companies interested in PNG's resources. In March 2011, for example, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton accused China of trying to "come in behind" the US and undermine Exxon Mobil's US$15 billion liquefied natural gas project in PNG. 

An autocratic turn in PNG could have played favorably into China's position, especially if PNG followed the way of nearby Fiji. A 2006 military coup there led by Commodore Frank Bainimarama undercut Fiji's civil society and established a new military dictatorship that has engaged China as its new patron. The Commonwealth banished Fiji from its membership in 2009, but that only pushed the country further into China's orbit. 

Different dynamics are in play in PNG, however. Ogio, who is also the Queen's envoy for PNG in the Commonwealth, declared the swearing in of Somare "wrong and invalid" on December 20, thus paving the way for O'Neill to ascend to the premiership. While it is unclear what internal discussion the British Crown and Ogio may have held, the final result was that Somare, despite his insistence that he was the country's rightful leader, lost significant international support. For the time being, political stability has returned to PNG under O'Neill's leadership. 

While PNG was embroiled in a potentially volatile political dispute, its neighbor, Papua Indonesia, was rocked by an intensifying labor dispute that acted to galvanize a long simmering insurgent movement. A workers' strike at the Grasberg mine over wages and other issues that started on September 15 evolved into a four-month standoff pitting at least 8,000 Indonesian miners, most of whom were indigenous Papuans, against the Indonesian subsidiary of the US mining company Freeport-McMoRan. 

One month into the strike, Freeport was forced in October to declare force majeure when it could not meet its contractual obligations on shipments of copper and gold concentrate under sales agreements from its Grasberg mine. Grasberg had been operating at only 5% capacity because of the strike and the workers were blocking off main roads from Porsite Harbor to the towns of Timika, Kuala Kencana and Tembagapura, which cut off food, production equipment, medicine and other supplies needed for the mine's operations. 

The strike led to protests and violence between the miners and Indonesian security forces which came down on the side of Freeport. Indonesian police and paramilitary fighters opened fire at a large demonstration in Timika, the town nearest to the mine, killing two at least strikers in October. As the violence escalated and the acrimony between the miners and the Indonesian government intensified, decades-old Papuan resentment over heavy-handed Indonesian rule boiled to the surface. 

On November 31, hundreds of Papuans converged in a rally in Timika where groups of indigenous Papuans hoisted the flag of Papuan independence, a move that had provoked violent security force responses in the past. After allegedly shooting warning shots, the police then fired on the crowd, killing at least four people. Smaller rallies then broke out throughout cities in Papua in which at least one more Papuan was killed. 

In total, eight people were killed in protests during the four months before a deal to settle the strike was reached on December 13. The agreement led to a 40% wage increase over two years for the miners, improved benefits, and a promise by Freeport to base future wage negotiations on cost of living and competitor benchmarks. In addition, workers were reimbursed for lost wages during the strike by a one-time three month "signing bonus". 

Unlike in PNG, however, the deal the deal between Freeport and the miners failed to contain the protests for Papuan independence or settle the wider crisis. Less than a week after the deal was reached, a helicopter flying at 600 feet over the Grasberg mine site was shot at allegedly by Papuan independence fighters. One of the 23 passengers was injured and the helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in Timika. 

The rebel Panai Free Papua Liberation Army (TPN-OPM) justified the attack by claiming that the helicopter was on the way to carry out attacks on Papuan villages in areas the group controls. In a December 16 report by the West Papua Media group, it was claimed that over four full strength combat battalions of the Indonesian army, paramilitary police and the elite counter-terrorism unit Detachment 88 launched an offensive where villages, schools and other buildings were burnt down in a bid to surround the TPN-OPM's headquarters under the command of General Jhon Yogi. The news group claimed at least 18 people were killed in the government assault. 

Whether the rebels' claims are more propaganda than truth could not be independently corroborated, but the messaging shows how Papuan fighters have exploited the Freeport issue for their political purposes. 

Despite New Guinea island's vast untapped resources and economic potential, PNG has struggled to chart a stable path as an independent country, while Papua remains pitched in a struggle against Indonesian rule. The tentative resolution of PNG's political crisis and the Papuan miners' strike brought both sides of the island back from the brink, but there is still unfinished business in both geographies. 

Papuan independence fighters are now more active than before the Freeport strike and PNG is on guard against a potential sudden attempt by Somare to retake political power by force. If both PNG and Papua can accommodate the different political, labor, and cultural interests within their respective borders, 2012 could present both parts of the island with opportunities for peace and development. However, recent history shows reaching such a complex accommodation will be difficult and new bouts of instability can not be ruled out.

punk lovers in the lives of Aceh people

Dozens of young men and women have been detained for being "punk" and disturbing the peace in Aceh, Indonesia's most devoutly Muslim province. They are being held in a remedial school, where they are undergoing "re-education" .

Rights groups have expressed concern after photographs emerged of the young men having their mohawks and funky hairstyles shaved off by Aceh's police. They look sullen and frightened as they are forced into a communal bath. But Aceh's police say they are not trying to harm the youths, they are trying to protect them. The 64 punks, many of whom are from as far away as Bali or Jakarta, were picked up on Saturday night during a local concert. 

Aceh police spokesman Gustav Leo says there have been complaints from residents nearby. The residents did not like the behaviour of the punks and alleged that some of them had approached locals for money. Mr Leo stressed that no-one had been charged with any crime, and there were no plans to do so. 

They have now been taken to a remedial school in the Seulawah Hills, about 60km (37 miles) away from the provincial capital Banda Aceh. "They will undergo a re-education so their morals will match those of other Acehnese people," says Mr Leo. But activists say the manner in which the young people have been treated is humiliating and a violation of human rights. 

Aceh Human Rights Coalition chief Evi Narti Zain says the police should not have taken such harsh steps, accusing them of treating children like criminals. "They are just children, teenagers, expressing themselves," she says. "Of course there are Acehnese people who complained about them - but regardless of that, this case shouldn't have been handled like this. They were doused with cold water, and their heads were shaved - this is a human rights violation. Their dignity was abused."

But Mr Leo disagrees. It is the second time the police have cracked down on punk culture in Aceh. "We didn't arrest them, they haven't committed any criminal offence," he says. "They are Aceh's own children - we are doing this for their own good. Their future could be at risk. We are re-educating them so they don't shame their parents."

This is the second time Aceh's police have clamped down on punks in the province, which is the only province in Indonesia allowed to implement shariah law. There is a thriving underground punk music scene in Aceh, but many punk-lovers are viewed suspiciously by local residents. Many of the young teens sport outrageous hairstyles, in keeping with punk culture, but against the norms of the keenly religious in Aceh. 

Aceh is one of the most devout Muslim provinces in Indonesia, and observers say it has becoming increasingly more conservative since Islamic law was implemented a few years ago.

Elegy Indonesian laborers

When the Jakarta governor offered a hefty pay rise last week to workers, he successfully headed off a major strike. But almost immediately, workers went on the rampage in another part of the country demanding a wage hike too.

It is another illustration of the most recent and, for investors, troubling risk they face in what has become one of the darlings of the emerging economies.

The big drivers for the strikes have been high prices for the commodities that are the backbone of the Indonesian economy, rising costs and a strong sense that the country's widely trumpeted economic successes have not been shared.

"Workers are not dumb. They are going to see prices are high. They're going to say 'we want our just rewards'," said Dick Blin, spokesman for the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which covers the bulk of Indonesia's main industries.

The highest profile -- and so far most costly -- strike has been going on since September at the giant Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc mine where 8,000 miners in the remote eastern province are demanding better pay.

Though union leaders in other industries deny that the Freeport strike was their trigger, the number of strikes has begun to mushroom across a broad range of industries from supermarket to telecoms, threatening to temper investor enthusiasm for one of Asia's fastest growing economies.

"These strikes are dangerous and show how weak the government is in facing industrial disputes," said Sofjan Wanandi, a leading businessman and chairman of the Employers' Association of Indonesia.

"With this situation, businesses will re-consider their expansion and investment plans, as well as plans to relocate factories from China to Indonesia," he said.

Businessmen from South Korea, a top investor, were also expressing concern, he said.

Investors in Southeast Asia's biggest economy have long factored in industrial-scale corruption, a complex and lethargic bureaucracy and even militant attacks.

But industrial disputes in the densely populated society, which has had little more than a decade of democracy, is a much newer hurdle.

Union membership is still quite low in a country where militant union leaders just a few years ago could expect to be hounded into jail, or worse.

POOR REFEREES

Subiyanto, the Secretary-General of Indonesia's Chemical, Energy and Mining Union Federation, estimates that only seven percent of companies have unions and the total number of workers who belong to unions is 15 percent. The number, though, appears to be growing.

Some labor-related laws are decades out of date and the number of officials supervising companies is simply too small to cope, he said.

"The fact is that government supervisors in the regions are getting lower and lower in number. For example in Tangerang regency (an industrial region), there are not more than 10 supervisors overseeing over 4,000 companies. How can you possibly monitor relations between the workers and the capital owners?"

"It's like playing football when the referee is not firm and you can see the strong oppressing the weak."

Some of those strikes have turned violent, and tension over the failure to create enough higher value jobs in the predominately youthful population could become one of the biggest mid-term risks, some analysts say.

A planned strike last week in Jakarta by 85,000 unionized workers was averted after the city governor agreed to hike minimum wages by about 20 percent.

Almost immediately, there was a similar protest for higher pay by 10,000 workers in Batam, an island home to manufacturers from nearby Singapore.

This time the response was slow. The military had to guard industrial estates after a mob burned traffic police posts and cars and attacked a government office.

As Freeport considers lifting pay by as much as double for more skilled contractors to end its crippling strike, any high pay award risks setting a precedent.

"If somebody asks for more, everybody will follow. That's a fact," said Alwin Lubis, president director at Indonesian miner Aneka Tambang. "That is what we're worried about."

RISING PRICES

The Freeport strike has come after gold prices doubled in the past two years. Prices for many commodities of which Indonesia is a leading exporter, such as tin, copper, coffee and cocoa, have also hit record highs in recent years.

"These commodity prices are a good opportunity to negotiate for better welfare, pay and wages," said Khoirul Anam, president of the Indonesian Forestry and Allied Workers' Union.

He said conditions were often little different from the days under Dutch colonial rule, arguing, for example, that palm oil workers should be paid three times as much.

"The bargaining position of labor in Indonesia has increased. However, it is not that much. They have slowly understood their rights and are demanding more," said Andriko Otang from the Trade Unions Rights Centre.

BILLIONAIRES AND LOW SALARIES

The strikes have coincided with growing wealth on the back of the global price commodity boom and a burst in consumerism.

On the day workers rioted in Batam, others were injured in a 5,000-strong crush to get half price Blackberry mobile phones in the capital. Also that day, Forbes released a report saying the country had created four more billionaires, with the wealth of its Indonesia "Rich List" up by 19 percent to $85 billion.

Indonesia is creating millionaires faster than any other in the Asia-Pacific, according to wealth manager Julius Baer.

Yet monthly wages average $113, less than a half that in Thailand and a third of China's, according to the Asian Development Bank's latest data. And half the population survives on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank.

Low-wage workers, seeing pay rises cancelled out by food prices climbing 15 percent last year, are being surrounded by growing consumerism and displays of wealth. Their expectations and perceptions of inequality are rising too.

"Many of us don't see any improvements in our life," said Sari, a worker making Adidas shoes in a footwear factory, a sector where plants have relocated from China and Vietnam in the past year after wage costs rose there.

"A factor that would make a person go on strike is when one feels trapped. We are going in that direction, so the likelihood for more strikes in garment, textile and shoe factories is huge."

Djoko Susanto - become millionaire from the business shut down traditional markets owners

At age 17 Djoko Susanto started managing his parents' modest 560-foot stall inside Pasar Arjuna, a traditional market in Jakarta. The stall, called Sumber Bahagia ("source of happiness"), sold groceries at the time, but soon Djoko decided there was a bigger opportunity peddling cigarettes. Business was brisk as not only smokers but also small wholesalers and retailers became frequent customers. 

His gamble on smokers paid off in a bigger way than the enterprising shopkeeper could have imagined, attracting notice from Putera Sampoerna (No. 9 on our list of Indonesia's richest), whose own company was then one of the nation's largest makers of clove and tobacco cigarettes. The two met in the early 1980s and agreed in 1985 to build 15 similar stalls in several areas of Jakarta. The venture was successful and inspired the two to open a discount supermarket store named Alfa Toko Gudang Rabat. That same year Djoko became the sales and distribution director at Sampoerna's much bigger and more established firm. 

The pair opened their first Alfa Minimart (the name was later changed to Alfamart) in 1994 to appeal to Indonesia's lower- to middle-class customers in search of cheap prices and convenience. "I thought about naming it Sampoerna Mart, but I used Alfa, a known and tested brand," says Djoko. 

The partnership lasted until 2005, when Sampoerna sold his tobacco business, along with its subsidiaries (including his firm's 70% stake in Alfamart), to Philip Morris International for slightly more than $5 billion. 

With no interest in retail, Philip Morris gladly sold the Alfamart stake to Djoko and private equity investor Northstar. Last year Djoko bought out Northstar, leaving him with 65% of the company. It was a smart move: Shares of the thinly traded retailer have doubled in the past 12 months (and quadrupled over the past two years), catapulting him into the ranks of the world's billionaires. He makes his debut at No. 25 among Indonesia's richest, with a net worth of $1.04 billion. 

Djoko, who sold the supermarket business a few years ago, is still bullish on his convenient and affordable minimarts. The sector is growing an average 15% to 20% a year in terms of sales. Alfamart, whose 5,500 stores serve more than 2 million customers daily and employ more than 57,000, is leading the transition from roadside wooden shacks selling dubious goods to modern minimarts with reliable items at prices that are the same or better. It is looking to open another 800 outlets in 2012. 

"The minimarket is always accused of hampering the traditional markets. What they do is encourage the traditional market to improve their services," says Djoko.

Not have diplomatic relations, Indonesia and Israel remain intertwined cooperation

Five medical experts from Indonesia are graduating Thursday from a course at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center on coping with natural and man-made catastrophes.

They are among a group of 27 physicians and nurses from 17 countries taking part in a simulated mass casualty event (MCE).

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, but it has no diplomatic relations with Israel.

Rambam management said the simulation is part of the eighth course of its kind, being held from November 6 through the end of this week. It is jointly sponsored by Rambam, the Foreign Ministry and the Health Ministry.

Rambam’s staffers are experts in trauma, emergency and mass casualty situations due to being the main hospital in the North. For years, the hospital has received soldiers injured on the northern border and beyond, as well as civilians caught in home-front wars and terrorist attacks.

“In the course, we learn how to build a system for operating in emergency, trauma and MCE. We did not come to seek medical information, but guidance on how to get organized in case of these situations,” said neurology professor Andi Asadul Islam, from Hassan Udim University in Makassar, Indonesia. “Rambam’s system for trauma is the best there is, and we can learn a lot from it.”

The group will receive their diplomas at the ceremony at Rambam.

“We don’t have a good system,” Islam continued. Indonesia’s broad geography presents specific challenges in supplying medical care, he explained. With some 250 million citizens scattered among five large islands and thousands of smaller ones, Indonesia spans an area, from west to east, equal to the length of the US.

Rambam also houses the only trauma system in the North, serving nine general hospitals who cannot take care of severe-trauma patients. The hospital’s Teaching Center for Trauma, Emergency and Mass Casualty Situations leads instruction in this field nationwide and regularly holds international seminars for doctors and nurses from around the world. The center also sends representatives to different countries to teach courses and holds workshops for NATO personnel.

“I had heard about the Rambam course from colleagues who had taken it, and they said it was great,” said Asti Puspita Rini, who manages the 118 Emergency Ambulance Service Foundation in Jakarta, the capital. “It has been an excellent course... We won’t be able to implement each and every thing we learned but will certainly adopt parts of the program.”

The course involves theoretical lectures and enables participants to receive a wide view of the activities of the various emergency medicine units. They also visit IDF simulation centers and Magen David Adom headquarters.

The foreign participants are also taken to national and tourist sites, including the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

“As a Muslim, it was especially interesting for me to see the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem,” said Islam. “Some of my friends and family were afraid and didn’t want me to come here because of what they see on TV,” said Rini, “but it’s totally different than what the media show.”

They were also introduced to humous.

“Everything is well-organized and perfect,” said Dr. Edi Prasetyo, medical adviser on home care in Jakarta. “We get to see the big picture – how the whole nationwide system works.”