W

ith more Australians eager to learn the Indonesian language, the Indonesian government will deploy more teachers to its southern neighbor in order to foster people-to-people contacts between the two countries, which have had a rocky relationship over the years.

Indonesian Ambassador to Australia Nadjib Riphat Kesoema said the growing demand for Indonesian-language teachers in Australia was because the language had become of the third most popular foreign language studied by Australians after Chinese and Thai.

Nadjib said that in order to facilitate the influx of Indonesian-language teachers to be deployed by the Culture and Education Ministry, the government had established language centers in major cities in Australia, including Sydney, Perth, Darwin and Melbourne.

'€œAt the moment, the language centers share buildings with our KBRI [Indonesian Embassy] office in Canberra and with one of our consulate offices in Sydney,'€ Nadjib said recently in Sydney, adding that the government would establish separate buildings for Indonesian language centers in Australia in the future.

Nadjib said that in addition to deploying more teachers to Australia, the government would also recruit Indonesians studying in Australian universities to teach the language to local community groups in Australia.

Another sign of the popularity of Indonesian language and culture among Australians is the number of visitors to the Indonesian cultural center in the embassy in Canberra, said Nadjib.

'€œThe center has become an educational tourist destination to be visited by tourists and students in Australia. We receive around 150 students visiting the place [weekly] who want to know more about Indonesian flora and fauna, music, food and traditional outfits,'€ he said.

Currently, there are more than 63,000 Indonesians living in Australia, excluding the approximately 18,000 Indonesian students currently enrolled in Australian educational institutions.

Indonesian Consul General in Sydney Yayan Mulyana said the more Australians spoke Indonesian the more the citizens of the two countries could connect in friendship as close neighbors.

'€œFor example, Australians could learn more about Indonesia from news published in Indonesian, not only from the news about Indonesia published by Australian media outlets. That way both countries could create a balanced understanding of each other,'€ Yayan said, adding that the New South Wales state administration spent a total of A$5 million (US$3.65 million) every year to fund foreign-language learning, including Indonesian, in the state.

Yayan said one of the main reasons Australians wanted to learn Indonesian was to visit Indonesia.

Separately, Epy Djulianti, the head of the Sekolah Pelangi Indonesia, which is one of the four Indonesian-language community centers located in New South Wales, said the school had seen an increase in the number of students recently but it lacked volunteers to satisfy the growing demand for Indonesian-language learning activities at the community center.

'€œSome of our volunteers have other activities on Saturday. Since its establishment in 2012, the school has received a total of 100 students. We provide fun learning activities to make them interested in learning Indonesian,'€ Epy added.