Jobs crisis Down Under no help to displaced Balinese
PERTH: A plan to bring Balinese workers into Western Australia to help alleviate the chronic shortage of workers in the hospitality industry has stalled because of red tape.
It was hoped to bring in about 500 Balinese, many of whom are struggling to find work in Bali because of the depressed tourism industry.
The Australian-Indonesian Business Council now says only about 100 chefs, cooks and hotel managers are likely to be recruited from Bali. Many more will be denied jobs because they are considered unskilled and not allowed into Australia under its temporary migrant worker scheme.
Delays in reaching agreement with the Indonesian government also mean that the first recruits are still at least three months away.
Australian-Indonesian Business Council national vice-president Ross Taylor said it had been a frustrating process given hospitality businesses were badly in need of workers while people in Bali were desperate for jobs.
“For every two chefs or cooks we recruit in Bali we could get 15 to 20 experienced waiters and these are young people who speak fluent English with a minimum of four or five years experience in top-class establishments but the tragedy is we can’t recruit them because the Australian government does not consider them skilled,” Taylor told the West Australian newspaper.
The head of the state’s restaurant and catering association, Terry Bright, said the Australian federal government had to urgently review its working visa restrictions given Australia was now in the grip of a labour shortage rather than a skills shortage.
Said Bright, “There is a desperate need for wait staff, there is a desperate need for people to make beds, there is a desperate need for 1000 cleaners in the state, there is a desperate need for what I would term unskilled but trained staff.”
A federal government committee is investigating workforce challenges facing the tourism industry.
The staff crisis in Western Australia is unlikely to help workers at the 200-room Bali Hai Resort & Spa in South Kuta, which will be closing its doors on May 20.
Bali Update reports that while officially citing “circumstances related with Indonesian law” as the cause of the closure, the hotel was in the process of a final handover from its previous owners to new owners, fuelling speculation that the finalisation of the sale fell through when the new owners were unable to obtain unencumbered ownership of beachfront property.
General manager of the resort, Jean-Charles Le Coz, said that the 260 employees of the resort were all being granted severance packages in accordance with the Indonesian labour law.
In a separate story, Bali Update quotes the head of the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI), Ir. Tjok Oka Artha Ardhana Sukawati, calling for new accommodation development in Bali to be halted. According to Sukawati, the “real” occupancy level of Bali hotels now averages around 30%.
Ian Jarrett
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