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fter suffering the aftermath of the devastating 5.9 magnitude earthquake in 2006, batik producers in Bayat district, Klaten regency, have now recovered their livelihoods as their businesses are reportedly doing better than ever.

“It was not easy. We had to start all over and we only recovered after about three years of hard work,” Marsita, 37, a batik maker in the Jarum subdistrict of Bayat, told The Jakarta Post recently.

The quake on May 27, 2006 devastated Yogyakarta and parts of Central Java, claiming nearly 6,000 lives, displacing about 1.5 million people and destroying over 300,000 houses and buildings in the two provinces.

Now, many batik artisans in Bayat have recovered from the impact of the quake, thanks to reconstruction programs.

Recalling the quake, Marsita said she was forced to stop production for three months because her house, which also functioned as a production site and a showroom, was flattened to the ground.

Because of the halt in production, she lost most of her customers, including foreign buyers and partners.

She had to look for new markets as she restarted her business. She is now pondering an expansion beyond the domestic market.

“Now I have to penetrate the foreign markets by myself and I just don’t know how and don’t have the guts to take the risk [of long-distance transactions],” said Marsita, adding that she currently had a limited market share for her batik products.

Batik workers in another subdistrict suffered the repercussion of the quake, as many of them were forced to abandon their profession because of a lack of orders from batik producers.

The blessing in disguise is that because of the earthquake, they can now run businesses themselves as batik producers, thanks to a economic recovery program launched in 2009 by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“Now, we no longer work for other batik producers but produce our own batik products,” said Dalmini of Kebon subdistrict.

While IOM is still supervising their business activities, they say visitors regularly come around every week to buy their products.

Buyers also came from foreign countries including Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Chile, Qatar and 17 IOM member states whose representatives visited their village in mid-2011 for the launching of the Kebon Indah batik showroom.

“Now we can only wait for buyers to come because we are still striving to create our own markets,” Triningsih, another batik producer in Kebon, said.

They have been trying to market their products from one store to another and to create networks with producers that have numerous business partners.

“We are expecting the government to pay attention to us as we still need supervision, both in terms of working capital and marketing,” Dalmini said.