Journalists laud organization of summit

The Communications and Information Ministry has learnt its lesson and has organized media facilities well for the upcoming ASEAN Summit, some journalists have said.

Media facilities have improved for the 19th ASEAN Summit, which is using the Bali International Convention Center (BICC) and the Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center (BNDCC) as venues, both of which are within the Bali Tourism Development Corporation area in Nusa Dua.

The previous summit was held at the Jakarta Convention Center.

The ministry has provided one media center, located inside the BNDCC, while at the previous summit two separate media centers were provided outside the venue, with one being a make-shift tent.

An Indonesian journalist from vivanews.com newsportal, Denny Armandhanu, said that the media center was better now than it was in Jakarta because media-related events now all happened in one place.

“At the previous summit, press conferences were located in one of the media centers, so people in the other center would not know [immediately] if there was a press conference taking place,” he said on Thursday.

He also praised the improvements the ministry had made, with fast-speed wireless internet connections, “numerous computers” and a sufficient number of power outlets all on hand.

The ministry’s director general for information and public communication, Freddy Tulung, said that one media center had been provided based on the experience of the previous summit, where the two separate centers had proved to be ineffective.

He said the ministry were now providing 300 computers, around 200 Internet connectors for laptop users and a broadcast center with more broadcast system dispatchers for approximately 1,958 local and international journalists from 502 media outlets.

At the Jakarta summit, Rp 20 billion (US$2.22 million) of taxpayers’ money was allocated to taking care of the media although it was unclear how much was spent on the two media centers, while according to procurement documents, Rp 13.16 billion had been allocated to running the media center for the Bali summit.

PT Royalindo Expo Duta won the procurement bidding process. The company is owned by the Indonesia Congress and Convention Association chairman and member of the People’s Consultative Assembly from the People’s Conscience Party, Iqbal Abdullah.

The media centers at the previous summit housed approximately 200 computers for more than 350 local and international journalists covering the event.

Journalists covering the Jakarta summit complained about a lack of working space, a lack of computers, very few power outlets for laptops and poor Internet connections.

“All we needed was a good Internet connection for our work,” said Than Zaw, a Myanmarese journalist who covered the Jakarta summit.

At 2 gigabytes per second and at 10 times gigabyte per second, Freddy said that the bandwidth of the
Internet connection this time around would suffice.

“There is no trouble with the Internet connection now,” said Amie Fenia Arimbi, a journalist from Antara.

A Singaporean journalist shared the same view, saying that the Internet speed was “really fast”.