Brilio.net/en - One of President Joko Widodos early projects was to build the water infrastructure and transportation. Indonesia is an archipelago country and it needs more facilities that connect the islands. The cattle ship KM Camara Nusantara I is one of the facilities provided to haul the cattle from remote islands like East and West Nusa Tenggara. The ship departed from Tenau Harbor, Kupang, NTT, and berthed in Tanjung Priok Harbor, North Jakarta.
At first they had trouble with getting the cows aboard from their central farm in NTT (East Nusa Tenggara) and NTB (West Nusa Tenggara). No single cow was loaded until its second shipping, but now they are jostling on the line to get on board. The government had to pursue farmers to sell their cows to solve the problem.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Andi Amran Sulaiman, mentioned that on their last sail his staff had to do a tight selection of the cows to get loaded. There are so many farmers who want to sell their cows in Jakarta because there is an increase in selling price.
They said the farmers were forced to sell with this price (not mentioned, -red.). Now the list is overloaded. A farmer was selling live cow in IDR 21,000 per kilogram, but then asked to increase IDR 5,000 per kilogram. I approved it. So there is an increase in price for the farmers, said Sulaiman.
The situation is different now from when the project was started. The cattle ship is now wanted to deliver cows from other provinces, such as South Sulawesi. According to Sulaiman, South Sulawesi government already requested for the cattle ship because the province is having a surplus of cows.
The fourth shipment of the cattle ship now carried as many as 500 cows. 400 of them were unloaded in Jakarta and the remaining 100 were distributed to Cirebon, West Java. The 500 cows were carried from two harbors in Kupang, which are Tenau Harbor that gave away 400 of Balinese cows (that weigh 275 kilograms each) and Waingapu Harbor that supplied Sumba Ongole cows that each weigh about 325 kilograms.
There are 8 business companies that use this ship for cattle, which are CV Semata Wayang, UD Harapan Jaya, UD Praiwora Putra, CV Tiga Berlian, CV Bina Taruna, CV STMJ, CV Generasi Baru, and PT Berdikari (Persero). After reaching Jakarta, the price for these cows is IDR 85,000 per kilogram.