Letters to the Editor Resents slur on Indonesians

I have had the article by Keith McCandlish (Odds ‘n Sods, Feb 23/87) on coal exploration in Indonesia pointed out to me.

Only the threat, at the close of the article, that there might be more of this “Perils of Pauline” stuff to follow and his naming of my company and suggesting, at least by inference, that we were geologically incompetent, prompts me to write.

In general the game seems to be to imply that the project was geologically saved from disaster only by the coming in of the intrepid consultant and that all Indonesians with whom he had dealings were either corrupt, incompetent or, in the case of the airline hostess who served him a ham roll, insensitive. For anyone with any genuine experience in South East Asia that last is the least easy to accept.

As far as our competence as a coal exploration group goes, I feel our record speaks for itself. I understand however that the reading of that particular passage in Mr McCandlish’s article produced gales of laughter in the Reston, VA headquarters of our World Coal group; and a wave of stories about consultants who site holes in the middle of diorite plugs, etc.

On the other points, I could perhaps say that I personally have had some 20 years acquaintance with Indonesia and the Indonesians; and although I have never lived there or worked there for an extended period of time, I have for the past 10 years regularly visited programs there reporting to me. I would like to put on record that I have always felt I had a good deal more to learn from the Indonesians than they had to learn from me, particularly in terms of their humanity and gracious concern for others.

If you want to run articles about Canadian geologists working round the world, can they not be written by those who feel part of the attraction of the practice of our profession is the contact it gives with the world’s many physically demanding environments and who enjoy meeting and working with other nationals and accept that things and people round the world are not particularly better or worse — just interestingly different? Oliver Warin Vice-president exploration manager Utah International Inc. San Francisco, CA