“We will distribute the new stocks to community health centers and the Rabies Center in Gianyar to be given to victims of dog bites,” he said, adding that the vaccines would be sufficient for the next three weeks. Previously, the regency had run out of vaccine because stocks at the provincial administration had also been depleted. “We proposed the provincial administration procure the vaccines long before we ran out of stock, but it was a long process,” Wirbhuana said.

source : bali daily

“His face and thorax was bluish. The doctor’s diagnosis is that he might have died before reaching the hospital,” she said. His family refused an autopsy and brought the body to their village. Seririt police precinct commander Comr. Joni Antara Putra confirmed the incident, saying the police were still investigating the cause of death. “We have questioned the hotel’s personnel and family members. We’re still investigating whether he died of an overdose or other causes.” Based on medical examination, there was no indication of violence, he said.

source : bali daily

“The worker was fetching water this morning when he found out about the burglary,” the temple’s chief custodian, I Nyoman Palguna, said, as quoted by Antara news agency. Palguna described the special shrine as a 5-meter tall tower-like construction. The burglars made away with scores of golden flowers and gemstones. So far, 10 temples across Tabanan and dozens of temples in other regions in Bali have been broken into by burglars. Police have yet to make any real progress in their investigation.

source : bali daily

It is easy to get to Gili Trawangan, and the other two islets — Gili Meno and Gili Air, with travelers arriving either by sea or air. From Bali, there is a ferry to Lombok on which you can take buses, private cars or motorcycles, from Padang Bai port in Karangasem, east Bali. There are also speedboats from Padang Bai to Lembar Port in Lombok. The trip to Lombok takes around one hour on the 50-seat speedboat and passengers pay fares between Rp 500,000 and Rp 1 million (US$51.35-$102.70) per person. However, those who easily get seasick are advised to travel by plane.

Local airlines, such as Garuda Indonesia, Lion Air and other companies, already offer direct flights at affordable prices connecting Bali and Lombok islands. The flight itself only takes about 20 minutes. The cheapest, but longest, route is traveling by bus. Passengers only pay Rp 200,000 for a bus ticket. But it is a long journey of at least 12 hours, depending on winds and rough seas in the Lombok Strait. However, once on Gili Trawangan, this painful journey will quickly be forgotten as visitors enjoy the beauty of the islets and their precious underwater life.

Hundreds of tourists stay on Gili Trawangan to enjoy a more peaceful and quiet holiday, far away from the hustle and bustle of Bali. Measuring only 7.3 square kilometers in size, Gili Trawangan now offers accommodation facilities ranging from modest to star-rated establishments. Lines of bars, restaurants and local warung (food stalls) serve dishes of Indonesian and international fare. No motorcycles, let alone cars, are allowed on the island. Transportation is limited to bicycles and cidomo (horse carts). A one-hour tour around the island by cidomo is available from Rp 150,000 to Rp 200,000.

Bicycles are also available for rent at Rp 15,000. No gas emissions, no noise pollution from motor vehicles — that is Gili Trawangan islet. An ideal location for a nice holiday break in an environmentally friendly destination.

source : bali daily

Banks and other financial institutions must be active in educating the community on the importance of savings and using banking services to benefit their lives. He also said many people, such as rich village farmers, had a lot of money but still did not have a bank account. They usually used their money to buy property and items made of gold. According to data from the central bank, Bank Indonesia, the growth in bank saving accounts in Bali stood at 25 percent in 2012.

source : bali daily

Buleleng, which is home to a population of 675,513 residents, has a 144 kilometer-long coastline. “Garbage is due to a lack of environmental awareness. We hope that through this activity we can start raising awareness among our people to take care of the environment and stop littering,” field coordinator Luh Gede Juli Wirahmini said on Sunday, on the sidelines of an environmental cleanup at a Buleleng river, the Bayuning bridge and the former Buleleng port area. The activity is part of the preparations for the upcoming anniversary of the regency’s capital city, Singaraja, where the port is located. The former port has become a popular recreational site for tourists.

However, Wirahmini acknowledged that the site had also become increasingly polluted with plastic waste from upstream. The pollution has not only resulted in the unwelcoming piles of trash but also the foul smell they emit. Wirahmini said that most residents were unaware that unlike organic trash, plastic trash was non-degradable material that required around 1,000 years to break down. Once plastic particles have broken down, they continue to pollute the soil and water.

Meanwhile, many residents also opt to burn their plastic waste. Wirahmini explained the danger of burning plastic, as the smoke contains dioxin, a chemical substance extremely harmful to human health. Ironically, the management of the former Buleleng port has not provided sufficient trash bins. In October last year, during a tourism festival along Lovina Beach, which is about 9 kilometers west of Singaraja, Buleleng Regent Putu Agus Suradnyana regretted that the accumulated garbage was the main obstacle to the regency developing its coastline as an attractive tourist destination.

Sunday’s cleanup included a lecture on garbage by a lecturer from Undiksha, Sukadi; a photo exhibition by the students of Undiksha fine arts education department; a theatrical performance by Komunitas Mahima; a contemporary bondres performance by Komunitas Rare Kual, as well as a performance by Ayu Laksmi and her music group Svara Semesta.

source : bali daily

Windia calculated that the majority of farmers in Bali owned only 1 hectare of rice field. “Every harvest season, the farmers may earn Rp 10 million [US$1,027] from the one-hectare rice field. They may harvest three times a year, meaning that they only get Rp 2.2 million per month, a monthly income comparable to a beggar,” the professor said. Meanwhile, a study revealed that a street beggar operating in an urban area like Denpasar may earn Rp 80,000 per day, or Rp 2.4 million per month. Between now and the next few years, the Balinese will seriously consider leaving their age-old profession as traditional farmers.

“The image of farmers illustrates a poor and unfortunate group in society,” he said. Windia said he was pessimistic about the provincial administration’s plan to protect rice fields and subak areas as investors kept pushing rice-field owners to give up their properties in return for instant cash. At the same time, both regional and provincial administrations ignored the problem and continued to issue building permits so the agricultural land made way for various development projects. Every year, Bali witnesses 1,000 hectares of productive land transformed into business and residential sites.

According to the Bali Statistics Agency, the property sector grew significantly at 20 percent in 2012, while the agricultural sector grew at only 4.3 percent in the same year. In the business sector, trade, hotels and restaurants grew by around 30 percent. Overall, Bali’s economic growth stood at 6.5 percent in 2012, above the national growth rate of 6.2 percent. Gusti Murjaya Yasa, a lecturer at the university’s school of economics, said that there was still a wide gap between the tourism and agricultural sectors.

“Bali has not yet implemented a sustainable tourism policy, while tourism should be based on agriculture,” Yasa said. Yasa admitted that tourism had contributed to the island’s revenue, as well as the national revenue. Bali contributed almost 50 percent to Indonesia’s tourism revenue of $6.5 billion in 2012. Revenues from Visa on Arrival fees reached Rp 16 billion in four years. “Tourism has brought so much financial benefit to the island and the country by generating a huge amount of money and by opening employment opportunities, but that does not mean it can sacrifice agriculture,” he noted.

The governments — central, provincial and regional — must start investing massively in agriculture. Asana Viebeke, a humanitarian activist, said that tourism had created a vicious circle for the poor. Instead of creating a more prosperous society, tourism in Bali had formed a deep ravine of poverty, especially for those living in rural areas. “I have been reaching out to more than 20,000 poor children who have no access to education and health. It is ironic as they live amid the glitter of tourism,” Viebeke complained.

source : bali daily

He said the agency had designed a conservation program to run until 2014, but had yet to start the program. “The last time we conducted mapping was in 2010. We need support from animal lovers in our conservation efforts,” he said, adding that the old problems still occurred, including dead birds being neglected on the streets, as well as the lack of a tree replanting program. Currently, the bird population in two locations, Petulu Gunung and Petulu Desa, has reached 10,000 birds.

Local people are enthusiastic to join the conservation efforts, but demand clear solutions to protect the bird and its habitat. “We hope there will be a community offering their support. The Bali Bird Park once planned to help take care of the sick birds but has not put the plan into action,” he said. The agency plans to conduct identification and make an inventory of habitat conditions, as well as the species and population, in addition to monitoring, tagging and saving baby birds. They will also train local people to participate.

Some local people said they had cut down many of the old bunut trees (a type of fig) to prevent them from falling on their houses in stormy weather, resulting in the birds losing their habitat. In addition, the birds are also finding it difficult to get food due to the shrinking rice fields, where they usually hunt for small animals. I Wayan Kecug, a resident who runs a small stall in the middle of a rice field, said that it needed a lot of effort from researchers and animal lovers to conserve the birds, saying many eggs failed to hatch due to unsuitable conditions.

Research published in the Indonesian Science and Technology Digital Library in 1993 stated that the presence of kokokan in Petulu was related to local social and historical factors. Most of the birds in the habitat (above 95 percent) were Bubulcus ibis, whiles the remainder consisted of several species, like Egretta garzetta, Ardeola speciosa and Nycticorax nycticorax. The research also suggested several factors that hampered population growth, including a degrading habitat and increasing human activity in Petulu village, located around four kilometers from Ubud.

The birds are believed to bring blessings to local people. In 1965, when village residents had just finished performing a ritual, thousands of the birds suddenly flocked to the trees along the village’s streets. Since then, the birds are considered sacred, and local people usually perform prayers at a monument established in the village’s temple to honor the birds. In 1991, Petulu Gunung was honored with the Kalpataru award, a prestigious Indonesian environmental award, by the late-former president Soeharto due to the conservation efforts. In addition to building the monument to honor the birds, residents also conduct special rituals once every six months in conjunction with Kuningan day.

source : bali daily

In the south of the island there is a great emphasis being placed on key macro infrastructure projects, such as the airport, the underpass and over-water relief road. While in most other parts of the island significant development is severely lagging. The second airport and West Coast relief road are obvious examples. Cynics might suggest the southern infrastructure development is only happening now because of the upcoming major international conferences. While that may be true, it does not change the fact that they are being built, and may improve the dreadful congestion for residents and visitors alike.

Beyond these projects, at least on the face, there seems to be very little long term spatial planning or control. In fact with the explosion of hotel, villa, house and shop building, something that has attracted so much negative comment, a visitor to the island would be totally excused if he believed that there were no planning regulations at all. What is perhaps most staggering is the incessant building of hotels and villas, despite the report of low occupancy rates and rising prices. Throughout the island, but particularly in the south, star-rated and budget hotels seemingly appear almost overnight, despite the governor’s somewhat toothless moratorium on hotel and villa development.

Research published by Knight Frank last year indicated that Bali will have at least 10,466 new hotel rooms between 2012 and 2014. They conclude as of September 2012, that 37 percent were already operational, which leaves a staggering 63 percent more to come in the next 18 months. A cursory glance at the skyline will confirm building on a monumental scale. The figures released by Knight Frank, of course, do not include the incredible number of unregulated rooms that are increasingly on offer. For the consumer, it is a reasonable assumption to expect that the increase in choice should drive prices down, and in the budget sector this seems to be the case.

Many new hotels especially are offering basic rooms with basic amenities at very low prices. But with starred hotels the opposite seems true and annual increases of 8 to 10 percent are reported as the norm. The reality was highlighted in late 2012 by Anak Agung Gede Rai, former director of Bali Tourism Development Cooperation (BTDC), who said recently: “With the flood of tourists coming to Bali, it would be logical for our hotel occupancy rates to increase. But, in reality, we still have stagnant occupancy rates.”

Perry Markus, secretary of the Bali chapter of the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI), said that some hotels even had below 50 percent occupancy most of the year, whilst during the June to August summer and school holidays most were booked at between 80 and 100 percent. “Bali has uncontrolled growth in hotel rooms making competition very edgy,” he said. The dangers of the massive rise in hotel rooms to the image of Bali are significant; something which many officials appear obsessed with.

If, as Perry and Rai suggest, current occupancy in many places remains unsustainably low then it is obvious that with ever more hotels and rooms pressing for guests there will be closures and corners cut in service. Pricing aside, the constant development is clearly destroying much of what visitors come to see: rice fields, wide beaches, mountain forests, mangroves, are all disappearing in the rush to cash in. In summary, the south of island is seeing commendable macro infrastructure projects, without, it must be said, much in the way of supporting development or wider development in the north.

The post-bombing increase in visitors has fueled the rapid development of hotels, which continues largely unchecked despite a building moratorium in the south. In the meantime, the island’s attractiveness is rapidly declining, especially to more affluent and adventurous travelers, who it seems, are growing tired of seeing the once idyllic island disappearing under its own weight of refuse and concrete. So at this pivotal point for the island, when the path taken will determine its medium- and long-term viability as a tourist destination and with it the economic and cultural future of its residents, it is time for clear and strong leadership and sensible policies with long-term goals. Never has the island needed it more.

source : bali daily