Absolute Scuba Bali and Padang Bai Beach Resort report of abuse of trust, confidence tricking, breach of agreement and abusive employment conditions at Padangbai Bali

Absolute Scuba Bali and Padang Bai Beach Resort is a dive centre and resort located in Padang Bay in Bali. In 2017 it was 25% owned by Rodney Gray, an Australian diver-accountant and 75% owned by another company from Jakarta namely PT. Asia Pacific Mining resources, which belongs to and was headed by a Dutch national Willem Van Dongen, with directors Emmanuel Domen (Belgian - managing director), Thomas Azali (Indonesian - financial director) and Ramli Ahmad (Malay - operational manager for Absolute Scuba Bali and Padang Bay Beach Resort). The person who actually pulls the strings behind the scene in Bali however is a local instructor called Indra Suryawan, who is closely related to owner Willem Van Dongen.

The resort has had a large turnover of foreign managers and has had many management problems with customers, local staff and local authorities. My husband was hired as marketing manager for a year from June 1st 2016 and was asked to focus on refurbishing the resort, filling the rooms, and also to perform general management duties. He was hired by Willem Van Dongen in Jakarta in the presence of the three above mentioned directors and he was offered a salary and a 2,5% bonus if after one year the average occupancy of the resort was +60%.

At the time when my husband started the resort was in very bad condition, it was run down, had a sombre atmosphere and an average occupancy of around 10%. The primary focus was on marketing to groups of divers and the resort was competing badly with the other diving centres and resorts in Padang Bay. The employees complained about not having proper contracts, having to do long underpaid trial periods, underpaid overtime, and there were stories about theft of hotel materials.

When my husband asked Ramli Ahmad, the appointed operational director and liaison from Jakarta about following government regulations regarding the mentioned labour conditions, he and Willem Van Dongen answered that the local staff in Bali were lazy and incapable, that “they couldn’t even make an invoice”, and Ramli Ahmad even wrote to my husband in an email that it wasn’t necessary to apply the yearly minimal wages or other government labour regulations literally, and that the financial director Thomas Azali agreed with that.

During the first 5 months my husband worked on average 12 to 14 hours per day and sometimes 16 hours per day from 6:00 am in the morning until 23:00 pm at night to refurbish the resort and get it back on track. He developed new marketing programs, revised pricing, created new advertising materials, revised and redesigned the menu of the restaurant, made the rooms and public areas more colourful and attractive to non-diving customers and he opened the resort to travellers who stayed overnight to catch the fast-boats to Lombok and the Gili’s in the morning. People started coming because of the newly attractive rooms and prices and last-minute deals, and the rooms filled up to +90% during peak season and a comfortable +60% on average after 10 months, with the 2 remaining months being high season.

At that point however, the owner thought that the agreed to 2,5% yearly bonus was “too expensive” and decided to fire my husband before the year was up, since it was written in the contract that the bonus would be due “if after one year the average occupancy was +60%”.

They sent Ramli Ahmad over from Jakarta to Bali to negotiate the terms of his leaving. Ramli Ahmad started by showing an average occupancy calculation of 59.78% percent, which was based on an occupancy calculation for 24 rooms while the resort actually had only 23 operational rooms.

When my husband spotted this and pointed it out, Ramli Ahmad consulted back with the owner in Jakarta and then came back to offer a “partial bonus” which was actually equal to the outstanding one and a half months’ salary from the beginning of the contract, which should have, but hadn’t been paid because my husband hadn’t started working yet because his work-permit wasn’t ready on time.

Ramli Ahmad then threatened my husband that as a foreigner he shouldn’t expect any help from the local government and that he shouldn’t see a lawyer because a lawyer would only take his money and not help him. Then the other director, Emmanuel Domen told my husband on the phone that he would personally assure that my husband would receive the pending two months’ salary and “bonus” amount in three instalments if he signed a statement that he had been remunerated in full.

After signing that and handing over his work permit my husband left, but the payments didn’t go as promised of course. He had to wait an extra 4 months and send several letters and emails, including two officially registered overdue payment warnings, with the second one coming from the district court in Denpasar, before he received the final instalment.

What they paid my husband in the end was the full amount of salary according to the contract (which was legally due) plus an extra 1/5th of one month’s salary, while the agreed to bonus would have been 4 months’ salary.