Lombok tourist island no paradise for full-time residents

Panca Nugraha, The Jakarta Post, Mataram

Many residents of Gili Trawangan, off Lombok Island in West Nusa Tenggara province, lack access to such basics as education and healthcare, despite the rapid growth of tourism in the area.

Gili Trawangan, an exotic island of some 360 hectares, is famed for its natural beauty and friendly people. Administratively, the island, situated in the waters north of Lombok, is part of Pemenang district in West Lombok regency, along with two smaller islands -- Gili Air and Gili Meno.

"Trawangan has become a major tourist destination in West Nusa Tenggara. More and more foreign tourists are spending their vacation on Trawangan rather than at Senggigi in Lombok or in Bali, despite arriving by plane in Bali," said Akmal, a spokesman for a hotel on Gili Trawangan.

The island offers tourists white-sand beaches and clear seas, where they can dive, snorkel or simply swim.

It also offers visitors tranquility, with motorized vehicles banned from the island. People get around by bicycle or horse-drawn carriages called cidomo.

"This has actually been regulated in the awiq-awiq traditional ordinances. This is one of the reasons why tourists like it here -- the tranquility and no pollution," said a cidomo driver, Nasri.

In many ways, the expansion of tourism on the island has benefited residents. Nasri is one of some 2,900 residents on the island making a living directly from tourism. He can earn up to Rp 150,000 (about US$17) a day as a cidomo driver, far more than he would make doing the same job on Lombok Island.

Despite this, residents do not have the same access to healthcare they would if they lived on Lombok. Nasri, for example, said he and his wife did not know what to do when they were going to have a baby, because there are no midwives on the island.

"There is an auxiliary community health center, but it is seldom manned by health workers. Moreover, they are incapable of assisting in deliveries," he said.

Residents have to cross to Pemenang village on Lombok, where there is a community health center.

"Stories abound of mothers delivering babies on the boat or the moment they arrive at Bangsal jetty in Pemenang. It's bad luck if deliveries occur at night or during bad weather," said a neighborhood chief on Trawangan, Muhammad Alex.

The local administration did build a community health center on Gili Air. However, residents still have to cross in boats from Trawangan, so most prefer just going to Pemenang, because it is easier from there to get to a hospital in the provincial capital Mataram in the event of difficulties.

Healthcare has seemingly been neglected on Gili Trawangan. According to Alex, a floating clinic was operated in the area for a time in 2004, providing services every three days to residents on the three islands, including Trawangan. However, the service only lasted for a few months.

Trawangan residents say officials also have neglected education. There is an elementary school and a junior high school on the island, with the two having been merged to form the one-roof Basic Integrated Education System.

The elementary school was established in 1989 and the junior high school was only opened three years ago. The island also faces an acute shortage of teachers.

"What makes it more difficult is that we only have four teachers, one assistant teacher and two contract teachers, despite the fact that there are 10 classrooms and 390 students. We have never had a religion teacher or a sports teacher ...," said the school's vice principal, H.M. Laduni.

Laduni said the nine employees from hotels on the island helped out by acting as honorarium teachers, for which they are paid Rp 150,000 a month from contributions collected by the hotels.

"However, we still expect the government to look into this matter immediately because we should have at least 16 teachers. We have sent several proposals but still have not received a reply," he said.

According to Laduni, hotels on the island only hire local residents as security guards and gardeners, with the higher-paying positions being filled by people from outside the area.

"We cannot blame anyone because our human resource development is still poor. However, without attention from the government, when will we be able to fill higher positions?" asked Laduni.