Foreign ship with casino to start service from Belawan

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan, North Sumatra

A foreign cruise ship with an onboard casino will start operating immediately between Malaysia, Singapore, North Sumatra and Riau, in a bid to lure tourists to the two provinces, according to an official at the Ministry of Tourism.

The plan to operate the ship, which will serve the ports of Penang in Malaysia, Singapore, Belawan in North Sumatra and Dumai and Batam in Riau, has gained the support of the Directorate General for Sea Transportation, the North Sumatra port authority and local travel agencies.

R. Sarwono, a senior official at the Ministry of Tourism, said that his office had encouraged regional administrations to take an initiative in boosting tourism, including welcoming foreign cruise ships to their ports, even though they had casinos.

"So far, the Ministry of Tourism has not raised any objections to there being casinos on board these ships to help promote tourism," he said at a seminar on cruise ship business here on Monday.

He said it was time to open the province up to foreign cruise ships in a bid to boost cultural tourism.

He said that cruise ships should be allowed to stop at North Sumatra and Riau to tempt tourists to visit the country's western region as many foreign ships frequently travel to islands in the east.

The director general for sea transportation at the Ministry of Transportation, Loren Situmorang, said his office supported the plan to develop tourism.

He said that the Directorate General for Sea Transportation had opened about 2,141 seaports, especially for cruise ships.

Loren said that there were still obstacles for foreign-flag cruise ships stopping at seaports in Indonesian territory.

Then transportation minister Azwar Anas issued a decree on Sept. 10, 1992, which prohibits gambling on board any ship traveling in Indonesian waters.

Loren, however, said that the decree had been reviewed and the authority regulating gambling on board ships had been transferred from the directorate to the National Police.

He said that the number of cruise ships visiting the country had dropped over the past two years from 36 in 1999 to 32 in 2000.

Last year, the number of foreign ships visiting the country rose to 37 vessels, which carried 159,624 tourists. "We heard that 10 cruise ships will travel here next year. There is no confirmation on that figure though," he added.

Head of the province's tourism agency Pontas Pardede said that foreign ships had been traveling to North Sumatra since 1973.

He said the last cruise ship to dock at Belawan seaport was the Sun Vista, which is owned by a Singapore firm.

Earlier, the MV Astor from Cyprus and the TS Albatros from Monaco, each with a capacity of 300 passengers, had visited Belawan.

"We were told that foreign cruise ships hesitated to dock at Belawan because of Indonesia's gambling restriction and the seaport's poor condition," Pontas told The Jakarta Post.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the North Sumatra branch of the Association of Indonesian Travel Agencies (ASITA), Ben Sukma, said that foreign cruise ships were unwilling to travel to Indonesia due to various illegal fees.

"There has to be political will from the government to revoke the gambling restriction on board ships and to take harsh action against the practice of illegal fees, otherwise foreign cruise ships will skip coming to Indonesia," he said.