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Wood
Carving Enterpriser
Expecting Bali Soon to Get Recovered
The inert condition
of Bali tourism lately is indeed felt by
enterprisers of wood carving in Ubud. For
the time being, they just submitted to their
fate and expect the current condition will
come to an end immediately while looking
for other new opportunities that are capable
of keeping the local economy rolling.
 One
of them encountering such devastate condition
is I Made Suma, S.H. (42), the owner of
CV Mandalika Indokarya. According to Suma,
prior to the tragedy of the Bali Bomb he
had nine businesses in wood carving, furniture
and silver shop employing 20 workers. Today,
he can run only two of his businesses, namely
woodcarving and furniture and only employs
8 workers. "When the tourism of Bali
was still okay, most of our products were
purchased by foreign tourists both retail
and wholesale. And now, the condition drops
and it is difficult for me to hold on,"
he told Bali Travel News at his home at
Nyuh Kuning hamlet, Mas - Ubud.
Another obstacle faced by wood carving enterpriser
is the high price of wood materials. "For
the time being, I just make the goods based
on orders given by buyers and use up the
entire stock available. I do hope that the
tourists visit will increase again in order
that our business can get back to normal
levels again," uttered the father of
two children, who has commenced his work
since 1989.
In harmony with Suma, another woodcarving
enterpriser namely I Wayan Suparta (42)
also experiences the same problems. The
recent all-problematic condition makes him
fight more and find other ways to survive.
Similarly, he now also sells products of
newly sort namely synthetic rattan. By aluminium
frame, the synthetic rattan is braided to
make sofa, table, chair, nautile (with canopy)
and so forth. According to Suparta, he learned
to make these products from a French person
four months ago. "In Europe, particularly
France, these products have amply potential
market. On the last BIGexpo in Nusa Dua,
I met a buyer from France and promised to
come in the upcoming October. I hope everything
would run as expected," remarked Suparta
expectantly at his workshop ‘Tubagus
Handicraft’ at Nyuh Kuning, Ubud.
Problems faced by both enterprisers probably
can obviously illustrate that tourism business
in Bali is in a critical situation. The
level of their dependency on the visit of
tourists to Bali is extremely high. On that
account, new breakthroughs to draw more
tourist visits needs increasing without
a break, either by government or private
sector.(BTN/tar)
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