Dear Rickman,I am not sure if I men

Dear Rickman,

I am not sure if I mentioned to you before, but we have been arranging shipments from Fremantle to Surabaya for the John Fawcett Foundation Bali.

The John Fawcett Foundation have their own shipper owned 40’ High Cube Container which gets shipped up to Bali via Surabaya with donated medical equipment from West Australian Hospitals.

We organised for one of our container suppliers, Dion Clifford of True Blue Containers, to donate a 40’ High Cube container and the container is currently sitting at Ross’s Auctions in Perth.

Ross’s kindly store all the donated goods at their warehouse and then they physically load the container when there is enough cargo (they do this totally free of charge so this is their donation). I have a trucking company who arrange the transport of the container to the wharf also free of charge. Our donation to The John Fawcett Foundation is that we do all the export clearance of the container as well as we pay the local port charges and the ocean freight from Fremantle to Surabaya.

Once the container arrives in Surabaya, one of our old agents we used to deal with, PT Freight Express arrange the customs clearance for the John Fawcett Foundation Bali, and once the container has been cleared the John Fawcett Foundation Bali, arrange to get the container moved from Surabaya to Bali. I am not 100 percent sure whether PT Freight Express actually do any of the work for free or if not possible to do free I am sure that they do things at cost.

When the John Fawcett Foundation unpack the Shipper Owned Container in Bali, we our office (TAL Bali) then get the container picked up empty and use it and load clients commercial container in the container and ship it back to Fremantle. All this is handled by our office TAL Bali.

By doing this, we get the container back to Fremantle (without any cost to the Foundation) and when it is empty of the commercial cargo we organise for the container to be delivered to Ross’s Auctions so it can then be used to load more donated medical equipment.

As you can see, everything is done at no cost to the John Fawcett Foundation. I think we have been doing these shipments for at least 8 years – John Fawcett (reading in copy) would maybe remember better than I can as to how many years we have been doing this. At the start we got Maersk Line to donate the freight for the first container and then when subsequent containers were shipped they charged the freight to The John Fawcett Foundation at cost.

This modus operandi went on for quite a few years. When I brought my business partner out of Seatram and I had 100 % control, I decided that we would pay the freight and charges as our donation to the Foundation. This was an easy decision to make as John Fawcett (himself) is the closest thing to a living God that I know of. Please do yourself a favour and click on the following link to see what the Foundation does not just for Indonesians living in Bali but to the rest of the many islands that make up Indonesia.

www.balieye.org

Okay I know I have given you a long spiel about the John Fawcett Foundation (Abbreviated JFF) and there is a reason I have gone to these lengths.

Despite all the goods shipped to the JFF are donated for the JFF to continue doing all the volunteer work in Indonesia such as restoring sight in young and old, helping children overcome birth deformities such as cleft palates, the Indonesian Customs go out of their way to make money on these charitable shipments. The worst example of this was in 2014 when we shipped a 40’ High Cube container to Surabaya. The vessel sailed from Fremantle on 15th January 2014 and arrived in Bali on the 9th February.

I have attached to this email a number of email exchanges concerning this last shipment and from what I remember, The John Fawcett Foundation advised that the container was only released from Surabaya Customs in July 2014 and JFF had to pay around AUD 10,000.00 to get the container released. Apart from the time taken to get the container released, to make matters worse, some of the medical equipment had been stolen. What sick sort of individuals would do something like this ?

To cut a long story short, in Australia all the medical equipment is donated, the cost for packing the container and trucking is also donated, the Freight and other charges which we donated on this particular shipment was AUD 3,761.02. I was happy to pay this, as this is our donation in kind.

What I am not happy with is, this disgusting attitude of Indonesian Customs and the way they line their own pockets and take advantage of a charitable organisation like the John Fawcett Foundation. The Foundation has been operating in Bali for more than 25 years (if I am not mistaken).

The Indonesian Government (SBY) and The Australian Government (John Howard)
flew to Bali years ago to officially open the JFF eye clinic/hospital. It seems ludicrous that 2 powerful people, who hold the JFF in high regard take the time out to do this, when at the same time, Indonesian Customs treat the JFF like second class citizens.

There are also many Australian Doctors who (give up their time completely free of charge) regularly visit Bali to perform operations on Indonesian Children. To see the work they do and how they can change a child’s life brings one to tears. I also remember that John Fawcett told me that when the Bali Bombings happened in 2002, the victims (from many countries) received treatment in hospitals using some of the donated medical equipment sent from Australia.

Rick, I have addressed this email to you with a number of people in copy and I am sorry that this email is so long, but I wanted you to know the full story. The last time you were in Perth you spoke to me about Indonesian Royalty (Sultans - if that is the right description). On one of your trips to Bali you mentioned you stayed at a Palace and the Sultan lives in Bali even though they were originally from Java.

You also mentioned that some time ago you had a problem with some documents (maybe your children’s passports) and you were getting the usual red tape and it looked like this was going to take month’s to resolve. I believe you then involved the Royalty from Bali and hey presto problem resolved in 1 day. The reason I am writing to you is to see if you can involve The Royalty about the JFF’s plight in bringing donated medical equipment into Indonesia.

I think the JFF have done everything they can to rectify this problem and do not know who to turn to.

For the people receiving this email in copy, Rickman Mather has been a friend of mine for quite a few years and he has worked in Perth for huge companies like Worley Parsons. After his stint in Perth he moved back to Batam. Rickman is currently arranging for our company to get ISO accreditation (ISO 9001:2008) and he is married to a lovely Indonesian wife and has 3 beautiful girls.

Best Regards,