West Maluku Tenggara must attract local and international airliners in an effort to break the isolation of the new resource-rich regency and further economic development, says the State Minister for Disadvantaged Regions Ahmad Helmy Faishal Zaini,
"With the presence of mining companies and its virgin natural resources, many local and international airline companies need to forge major links between the regency and domestic and foreign cities," he said in an international seminar on the development of Tanimbar and its surrounding islands here on Wednesday.
He said the strategic position of the archipelagic regency facing Papua, North and West Australia and East Timor, would attract foreign tourists from neighboring countries, as well as Korea, Japan, Europe, New Zealand and the US.
"Tanimbar is more strategic than Bali and Lombok and it has many things for sale that will help improve the economic livelihood of the regency," he said.
Helmy said that isolation was the regency's main problem and the regency would only become advanced once sufficient infrastructure for air and sea transportation was built.
"Many mining companies and foreign tourists were interested in the regency's natural resources and beauty, but the absence of air transport has hampered businesspeople from investing in the regency," he said.
The regency consists of Tanimbar, as a major island, and more than 80 islets that are home to its population of 103,000.
Separately, West Maluku Tenggara Regent Bitzael S. Temmar called on the central government to allocate more special funds to end the isolation of remote and archipelagic regencies such as West Maluku Tenggara.
"Maluku and its problems are incomparable to other provinces in Java, Sumatra and Kalimantan. We have unique problems that other regencies in Java do not have," he said.
He said that government education and health services had been hampered by the difficult geographic condition and the climate.
"The regency has 10 subdistricts and more than 60 villages, but it only has one hospital with limited health workers for more than 100,000 people.
"The mortality rate among infants and mothers has remained high because of limited medical facilities and rare, but costly sea transportation," he said.
Bitzael further said that living costs in the regency were relatively high and farmers could not market their agriculture products to other regencies because of the limited and expensive transportation.
He said Tanimbar, known as the forgotten island, had rich natural resources such as oil and gas and that many foreign mining investors were eyeing the regency's abundant oil and gas deposits.
"The Chinese investor CNOOC is exploring mining the regency's 10 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and several national investors plan to build fish canning factories in the regency," he said.
