Dili, 29 May 2026 (Media Democracia) – Ministry of Youth, Sports, Arts and Culture (MJDAK), together with the State Secretariat for Arts and Culture (SEAK), held a meeting with media chief editors to discuss the strategy for protecting the authenticity of Timor-Leste Tais when used for state official uniforms.
According to the Director General of the State Secretariat for Arts and Culture (SEAK), Gil Paulino de Oliveira, this discussion aims to spread information about Tais to the international world.
“This is an opportunity for the Directorate General of Arts and Culture to spread information about its work on Tais, which continues to receive recognition from the international world, and to inform all communities that Tais is something all Timorese are interested in continuing to promote this cultural heritage. The technical implementation will be discussed in depth at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education so they can adjust the curriculum and include material to teach students how to recognize Tais motifs and what colors. Later, when they already have basic knowledge, we will cooperate with the commerce sector so Tais can be industrialized and produced like Indonesian batik. That’s the plan for the future.” said Director General Gil Paulino at the MJDAK Hall (28/05/2026).
The Director General also said they will work together with the Ministry of Agriculture to plant cotton to produce Tais.
“There are 2 things we’re planning for the future, we’ll work together with the Ministry of Agriculture because cotton has to be planted. To plant cotton to make original Tais using only natural dyes, we need to cooperate with the Ministry of Agriculture to make a garden to plant cotton to support the weavers. Besides that, materials related to dyes also have to be planted trees that produce dye.” affirmed the Director General.
On the other hand, Head of the Cultural Values and History Department Carlos de Jesus Freitas said that to protect the authenticity of Timorese Tais, we need to deepen knowledge about Tais within our communities.
“To protect the authenticity of Timorese Tais for official uniforms, we have to look at the fact that there is a lot of Tais coming in. In the Tais process we first need to know what Tais actually is because sometimes everyone knows it, but we need to deepen it more so we can give knowledge to our community to love their local products, especially Tais, because right now a lot of Tais is coming from East Nusa Tenggara (NTT).” said the Head of Department.
The meeting discussed strategies to protect the authenticity of Timor-Leste Tais to ensure that when used for official uniforms, the cultural value and originality of Tais remains preserved.
Reporting: Trainees Novita and Baquita
Photo: Trainee Baquita