Tourism activist and environmentalist Sebastian Hutabarat said the BPODT had done little to improve tourism around the world-famous Lake Toba since its establishment in 2016. The number of tourists — both domestic and international — visiting the region had plummeted in recent years, he said.

“The BPODT comes across as powerless when it comes to boosting tourism around Lake Toba. They seem to be merely acting as investors looking to acquire lands; that is why local tourism has remained stagnant,” Sebastian told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

The Tourism Ministry recently set a target of 1 million international tourist arrivals at Lake Toba this year. That number is four times the 250,000 foreign tourists that the ministry recorded in 2018.

Sebastian said the BPODT as a state authority should have been able to exercise its power to boost the local economy and tourism around Lake Toba. 

He said, for instance, the BPODT had failed to mitigate water pollution in Lake Toba, which had a direct impact on the recent decrease in the number of tourists. 

“Why would tourists be compelled to pay Lake Toba a visit when the water is polluted? This is a serious issue, but the BPODT has somehow overlooked it,” Sebastian said, adding that the BPODT had yet to take steps to resolve the matter.

Toba Cruise ship captain Andreas Siregar said he had witnessed a decline in tourist arrivals at Lake Toba last month. Decreasing tourist arrivals had since prompted members of the ship’s crew to resign and work as construction workers and farmers for a living instead.

“I have worked as a construction worker myself since there were very few tourists visiting Lake Toba,” Andreas said.

Several university students associated with the Students for Lake Toba Alliance staged a protest in front of the BPODT office in the provincial capital of Medan, North Sumatra, on April 17. They demanded that the state body be disbanded, since it had not significantly boosted local tourism around Lake Toba.

The students also claimed the BPODT had caused problems in the region by forcibly acquiring lands originally owned by the region’s indigenous people, supposedly for the future development of tourist destinations and amenities.

“We urge the Tourism Ministry to disband [the BPODT], because the state body has done nothing but chip away on the state budget,” said field coordinator Amrin Simbolon during the protest.

He added that, if anything, the BPODT had made the situation worse for the region’s customary people because of the unresolved land disputes.

Earlier this month, residents in Toba Samosir regency demanded the government return customary lands they claimed had been taken from them by the BPODT for tourism purposes.

They claimed the land appropriation violated the law. The group especially criticized the authority for unilaterally evicting residents from their villages for the launch of the Caldera-Toba Nomadic Escape in Ajibata district in Toba Samosir.

In response to the complaints and allegations, BPODT general director Arie Prasetyo claimed the state body had made significant contributions to tourism around Lake Toba in the last three years. He added that the state body had also paid special attention to the welfare of people living on customary lands.

“The point is, we have been actively involved in efforts to improve tourism around Lake Toba alongside local residents. The people living on customary lands are the ones who will benefit from the development of local tourism, after all,” Arie said.

He went on to say that the development of tourist destinations around the sprawling Lake Toba took time and required a great deal of patience.

“Of course, we sincerely apologize should our contributions have been less than satisfactory,” he said. (rfa)

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