(From left) Tieng and Raden at the press conference.
SIBU (Jan 20): Consul General of the Republic of Indonesia in Kuching, Raden Sigit Witjaksono, said his consulate general is seeking further cooperation and collaboration with Sibu and other towns and cities in Sarawak.
At a press conference today, he said since his appointment as the consul general last year, he had visited many cities and even rural areas to understand better the people of Sarawak and also try to resolve issues among Indonesian workers.
He said closer cooperation between Sarawak and Indonesia, especially its province of Kalimantan, is important to ensure economic growth of both places.
There is also a need to have further collaboration in terms of transportation to create better connectivity between Kalimantan and Sarawak, he added.
He said presently there is a daily bus service from Kuching to Pontianak in Kalimantan.
Apart from looking to have more bus services to reach other parts of Kalimantan, he said they are also looking at potential collaboration in terms of flight connectivity.
“This is of course our future potential collaboration, and we are trying our best, step by step. We need a lot of cooperation, that is why we are here to respond and to follow up from our previous visit and hopefully to have positive results.
“We really wish that Sibu and other cities and Indonesia, especially the East and West of Kalimantan, will have further concrete collaborations not only city to city but university to university, or other types of collaboration.
“We are open, and we are ready to facilitate this further collaboration. We do our best in terms of business to business, government to government and people to people collaboration,” he told a press conference yesterday.
He said during his visit to Sibu last year, he had met with the chairman of Sibu Municipal Council (SMC), Sibu Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI), University of Technology Sarawak (UTS) and so forth.
Describing Sibu as a very unique place, he said there are many areas here that have the potential for collaboration.
Citing an example, he said apart from cultural events, they are looking at having collaboration with UTS as there are many potential students in Kalimantan.
He said many students from West Kalimantan study at the tertiary institutions in Kuching such as Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) and Swinburne University of Technology.
“I thought why not go a bit further like UTS for example. I believe it will benefit not just Indonesian students but also UTS itself,” he said.
Raden is in Sibu on a visit for a few days. He and his family will join in the Chinese New Year (CNY) celebration in Sibu this year.
During his visit, he said he had visited Sibu Prison and workers at a plantation.
On the main task of the consulate general, he said it is citizen protection and giving assistance to Indonesians working in Sarawak.
As an example, he added, the consulate general visits plantations two to three times a month to help process the documents of Indonesia workers.
“What I understand is that most of the problems that our workers are facing are passport issues. What we encourage is for the workers to have proper documents, passports and permit and visa; that would be much better for us to make our cooperation with the industry sustainable,” he said.
He said at the moment, the consulate general is in the process of arranging for workers to come back to Sarawak to work in the industries in Sarawak.
Raden also said that since the pandemic, close to 80,000 Indonesians went back to their home country.
On the development of their new capital at Nusantara, he said the development of the main area which is about 6,000 hectares is already 15 per cent completed.
He said the Indonesian government planned to move 100,000 civil servants to the new capital from 2024 to 2029.
He also said that countries such as United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Korea and 21 European countries have expressed their interest to collaborate and invest in the new capital.
“The theme of the new capital is eco-friendly; which means 70 per cent are green area and 30 per cent developed for offices and other purposes,” he said.
He also mentioned that he had a plan to organise trips for the media to the new capital in the near future.
Also present at the press conference was general manager of Mafrica Group, Dato Thomas Tieng, who is also a friend of Raden.