5 người chết vì thang máy đứt cáp rơi xuống khe núi ở Bali

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Five people died last week when a hillside (sườn đồi) elevator plunged (thang máy lao xuống) into a ravine (khe núi) at a resort on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. The victims (nạn nhân) were not international tourists, but young men and women who cleaned the property’s Instagrammable, hundreds-of-dollars-a-night pool villas.

As of Thursday, the Bali police were still investigating how the glass elevator’s cable (dây cáp) snapped (bị đứt) at the Ayuterra Resort on Sept. 1, killing the five workers, aged 19 to 24.

But this much is clear: The accident (tai nạn) highlights the vulnerabilities (dễ bị tổn thương) of the labor force (lực lượng lao động) serving the foreign guests who see the island as a tropical paradise (thiên đường nhiệt đới), and whose spending drives Indonesia’s tourism economy.

Many of the workers who power Bali’s hotels, resorts, restaurants, spas, yoga retreats (khóa tu) and other tourism-dependent businesses grew up in villages around the island and attend vocational high schools (trường trung học dạy nghề) that specialize (chuyên) in hospitality (lòng mến khách) training. Some start their careers at 18 and typically earn less than $10 a day.

The wages in Bali, which has a population of more than four million people, can be higher than in other parts of Indonesia. But the island’s tourism industry is cyclical and vulnerable to external shocks, including the 2002 Bali bombing (vụ đánh bom Bali), the 2017 eruption (sự phun trào) of the Mount Agung volcano (núi lửa) and the coronavirus pandemic.