Foreign ship with casino to start service from Belawan

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.