*Aid PT Timah Tbk
BELITUNG TIMUR -- Kater Boat Fishermen on Serdang Beach are no longer worried about leaving their boat engines on the edge of Serdang Beach.
They have a warehouse to store their boat engines which were built by PT Timah Tbk in 2018. Every year the number of warehouses built by PT Timah Tbk continues to grow until now it has reached 20 warehouses located on the coast of Serdang Village.
Each warehouse can accommodate four fishing boat engines, in this warehouse fishermen store their fishing equipment. In the past, they had difficulty keeping the boat engine because there was no place. If you just leave it on the boat, it is feared that it will disappear.
Sultan (45), one of the fishermen who at that time was the head of the fishing group in Desa Baru, said that the assistance had been received from PT Timah Tbk in 2018. Thanks to this assistance, he and the other fishermen don't have to worry about leaving their boat engines.
"I happened to receive the assistance directly, because at that time I was the leader of the group. At that time we submitted the proposal to PT Timah, Alhamdulillah the response was good and fast, so that at that time we were able to build five small warehouse units for our boat engines, "said the Sultan when met on Friday (28/1/2022).
Sultan told, before the machine building. He and the other fishermen found it difficult to leave the machine. Even most of the fishermen are willing to carry the boat engine to the house.
"In the past, we used to play together at home, especially if the house was quite far away, so we were a bit tired. Not to mention if we wanted to go out to sea at night, we had to go all the way from the house to the boat," he said.
It has been four years since PT Timah's warehouse for machinery assistance is still well established.
"Now there are 20 machine warehouse units assisted by PT Timah, most of the fishermen here are very helpful. Moreover, I have been using the warehouse since 2018, and it is still good until now. so you have to be responsible," he said.
He also hopes that in the future PT Timah will again pay attention to fishermen in the group. One of the things he hopes for is the help of a boat engine with a rather large capacity than the one he is currently using.
"We hope that we can get boat engine assistance, because we fishermen here still use small engines. So when we go out to sea, sometimes we are still worried about the engine being damaged, so sometimes we have to bring other friends to sea. So that if there is anything we can get help quickly," he explained. (**)
