Friday afternoon I went to Kuta Galleria to meet with Amir Rabik, the Honorary Consul of Spain and Portugal. Amir is heading a new organization here in Bali called Bali Recovery Center. Amir told me that during Bali Bomb I the response services were is totally disarray. A friend of mine who spent a week a Sanglah hospital said groups of soldiers who were supposed to be helping out, were sitting in stairs wells playing cards, and he himself had to shout at them and get them moving. This time around it was a different story, news media was informed, police and emergency services were on the scene and planes out of the country were organized. Amir told me the one things Bali does not have is a recovery center for individuals and businesses. He told me that in order to get Bali back on track and inspire consumer confidence we must all pull together, every business arranging some kind of security and showing real awareness.
We talked about situations in the past from Bali Bomb I and the tsunami, to hurricane Katrina. Any time you have a huge disaster people around the world want to donate money and Amir pulled no punches. He told me here in Indonesia there is massive corruption, so having a place for people to send money, knowing that it is legitimate and with transparent accounting, is very important. There are ways to set up such a system.
For my part I told him that Baliblog is interested is helping Bali's recovery and I will give pointers for him on his web site when it happens. Also I will feature news items from the new site. Anytime a disaster occurs that makes the national news there are people who buy domain names that relate to that, hoping to cash in. I know someone who during Hurricane Katrina, went out and bought www.katrinarelieffund.com. Amir will probably use www.balirecoverycenter.com and I told him he should probably a few others like www.balidisasterfund.com or else scammers will create a site and try to take donations. It's a sick world we live in and there are some people are willing to take the money out of the pockets of disaster victims, but that's the 21st Century for you.
If other Bali businesses would like to contribute their services, to help the Bali Recovery Center, for example transport, cell phones, or whatever you have to offer, contact Rabik Amir 081 23840801. There will be a small get together with other business leaders at the pub close to Blueline internet in the Kuta Galleria at 6pm on Wednesday 12th October.
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This sounds a great idea.
I wish you every success.