City's tourism academy to send students abroad for training

JAKARTA (JP): The city-owned Jakarta Tourism Academy (APJ) is to dispatch nine of its top students to Singapore for a six-month job training placement at a five-star hotel on Thursday, director A.Z. Harahap said.

Prior to their departure, the students gathered on Tuesday to receive advice from their lecturer on how to behave properly during their stay in the neighboring country.

During the meeting at the campus on Jl. Cempaka Putih Tengah, Central Jakarta, Harahap and two other senior staff of the academy handed over to the students their travel documents and tickets, all of which were paid for by the students themselves.

According to Harahap, this placement will be the 13th batch of students sent by the academy to hotels in Singapore since 1993.

"We're trying to set an international benchmark for our students," he said.

The nine second-year students, six of whom are girls, also have TOEFL scores of at least 400.

Their colleagues will have their job training placements at local hotels in Jakarta.

Job training placements are required by the APJ students in their second year to complete their three-year diploma curriculum.

Harahap said that the nine students would first be appraised by the hotel's executives in Singapore before being placed at different divisions of the hotel, which is located on the popular Orchard Road.

They will be working a basic eight-hour shift per day with an allowance of S$550 (approximately Rp 2.7 million) per month each, he said.

In the first few years of the program, the academy cooperated only with three-star hotels in Singapore, he added.

"This will be the fourth group to be sent to the Royal Crown hotel in the past two years," Harahap explained.

He boasted that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Royal Crown Plaza Hotel and APJ was the first one signed by an Indonesian hotel academy and a Singaporean five-star hotel.

Meanwhile, the students have their own dreams about their future after their job training in Singapore.

"I'd like to work for the Grand Hyatt," said Dwi Novianti, referring to the luxurious five-star hotel on Jl. Thamrin, Central Jakarta.

Student Eri Elva Guci preferred to work abroad even if he had to be employed on a cruise ship.

The academy was established in 1972 by the city administration under the name of the Jakarta Educational and Training Institution for Tourism Industry.

Last year, the city administration changed its status into an academy to allow students to obtain a diploma degree.

APJ has some 400 students and 60 lecturers.

Every six months, it sends nine to 10 students to Singapore, Harahap said.

Upon their return from Singapore, the students have to first complete a thesis before graduating with a diploma degree. (03)