Why are TBI and DIKNAS alike? Anyone care to hazard a guess? I’d say that the main reason they are alike is because they both dislike and resent expats. Allow me to explain.

ARE DIKNAS XENOPHOBES?

We, at this blog, have argued that the core of the new DIKNAS regulations is a desire to reduce the number of expat teachers working in the “informal sector” in Indonesia. The seemingly haphazard regulations- no teachers over 55 years old and you must have a Degree in English, for example- all make sense if you view them from the angle that their very purpose is to make recruitment more difficult. The Department of Manpower was crowing in the Jakarta Post last week that they had reduced the number of expat workers from 77,000 to 48,000 since 2011. They promised to lower the figure even more. The changes to the ESL industry are part of sweeping changes that have seen engineers, managers and consultants across a while range of industries removed. The endgame is to have less expat workers in Indonesia and the regulations are a means to an ends. 

THE IBUS DON’T LIKE “WHITIES”

Really, TBI is exactly the same. In the two years C******* managed TBI Sudirman and TBI Kuningan, Ibu Ning never once asked him how the school was doing. He had the biggest profit-making school in the whole TBI-USG business in his hands, and she never once contacted him personally. He rarely saw her at all. According to several sources, she disliked expat managers and wanted them out. Apparently, she didn’t even want to get her hands dirty talking to “bule” managers.

It is widely known and discussed within management that the expats were on their way out. In 2007 all TBI schools were expat-managed from Kelapa Gading to Bogor to Kuningan to Malang and by 2012, when I resigned under constant pressure to lie to Head Office about earnings, there was only Scott Martin- Luke’s most slavish stooge and by all means a hopeless, incompetent manager. Ning wanted the expats gone and business charlatan “Ashley Platts” provided the White face to an anti-White policy within the company. “Think of the savings, Ibu Ning. We can pay Helmy 5 million a month,” he told her. The owners of KG have openly told me he was constantly lobbying franchise owners to get rid of White managers for “low cost” Indonesians.

MILKING THE “BULE” CASH COW

Therefore, the reason that TBI has never made a spirited opposition to the DIKNAS rules is that they have the same anti-foreigner mindset. TBI wanted to get rid of expat managers and use the expat teachers as “cash cows” with absolutely no hope of promotion or advancement. Luke and Ashley would serve as the White faces of the new Indonesian-managers-only regime and never admit they had knifed all the other managers to save themselves. There is, of course, a wonderful sense of karma in the fact that DIKNAS has now turned on them, trying to get rid of their “cash cow” expat teachers too. DIKNAS and their Head Office clowns have together turned TBI schools into a monkey-circus of teachers on VKU visas flying to and from Singapore 6 times a year- all to help keep TBI’s badly sinking business model afloat a little longer. And where would they be, honestly, if all the expats bailed?

In reality, TBI Head Office and DIKNAS are of one mind- they don’t like expats, resent the high wages they earn, and want to keep them under their thumb with few rights and privileges. TBI has absolutely no right to criticise DIKNAS when they operate under the same envious, spiteful mindset.