Lombok: Financially-Deprived and Destroyed by Earthquake
Iona Leys
Lombok has experienced many earthquakes these past few weeks, ranging from a 4 to a 6.4 magnitude. This has been happening because of the shifting of tectonic plates associated with Lombok’s main volcano Gunung Rinjani. These tremors caused many problems for not only locals but also for tourists. This event made a lot of tourists decide to quickly leave Lombok and The Gilis. Locals lost their homes and some of them even lost their lives. This has influenced the infrastructure of the cities. The people of Lombok have been suffering while these earthquakes, many of them have been living in camps and were scared to go inside their houses in fear of another massive earthquake.
Lombok is at a vulnerable state in its economy, because of these earthquakes, the tourism industry has been crushed. According to the Indonesian government statement, “Damages in housing are at IDR 3.82 trillion, infrastructure at IDR 7.5 billion, productive economy at IDR 432.7 billion, socio-cultural at IDR 716.5 billion, and cross-sectoral at IDR 61.9 billion (Nugroho)”
Image from: The Irish Times
Most of the houses were damaged by the hard impact of the earthquake, therefore a massive part of Lombok’s population was left without a home and now are temporarily living in tents which are funded by NGOs and the government. Locals of Lombok are also struggling financially as most of them can not obtain work in fear of another earthquake striking the island.
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Once again, according to the Indonesian govt report, “Categorised by territories, Lombok Utara suffered IDR 2.7 trillion loss, Lombok Barat at IDR 1.5 trillion, Lombok Tengah IDR 174.4 billion, and the city of Mataram at IDR 242.1 billion (Nugroho).” Meaning that the areas closer to Mount Rinjani were affected the most.
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“It went from high season just a few days ago to absolutely nothing now,” lamented Howard Singleton, the owner of a beachside restaurant in the west coast town of Senggigi, ravished by striking sunset views of a volcano on neighboring Bali (Resort).
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Howard Singleton explained how drastic the earthquake affected the island of Lombok, he had a lot of customers in his restaurant but after the earthquake, his customers disappeared.
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Lombok is one of 10 new destinations dubbed, “the new Balis”, that Indonesia is developing to help attain Widodo’s ambitious target of boosting tourism revenues to 8% of GDP and attracting 20 million foreign tourists a year (Siregar). Therefore Joko Widodo wanted Lombok to be the next Bali and since the Earthquake, this will obviously not happen.
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Asnawi Bahar, chairman of Indonesia's tour and travel agency association, described the earthquake as a "temporary shock" for the sector (Resort). Meaning that, since there has been an earthquake, the tourism industry in Lombok has not completely been destroyed, only a slight crack. He believes that Lombok will rise from this situation and go back to its glory days once again.
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But to get back to what it was financially before the earthquake, they have to work and receive a lot of help from both NGOs and the government in order to help build Lombok back up to the tourism industry can thrive again on the island.
