Activists say charity takes its toll on people's mentality

JAKARTA (JP): Community activists said they find it hard to switch people's mentality from being recipients of charity to self-help participants, and blamed corruption under the previous government for their attitudes.

"It's surprising to see the moral damage caused by the Soeharto government's pervasive corruption practices," Hanny Adiyati, monitoring manager of the Community Recovery Program (CRP), said.

In the Soeharto era, people were influenced by the widespread corruption, and many charity recipients had no sense of accountability, she said.

In April, Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, a private Hong Kong agency, announced that Indonesia topped a list of Asian country's ranked on the extent of corruption and cronyism.

CRP is a consortium of 27 prominent non-governmental organizations formed in the middle of last year to support small institutions in various sectors, with granted aid of US$13.14 million as of August.

Unlike the government's safety net program, which does not require accountability from recipients, the CRP program sought to instill a sense of accountability in recipients by providing reports on the use of the fund, she said.

Hanny said it was her task to empower the people and to change their attitude toward financial aid.

"Civilians can also come up with initiatives," she said.

She said many think they can do whatever they like with the funds and there were cases when people even wanted to use the money to campaign for a district candidate.

John Nakiaya, a community activist from Jayapura, Irian Jaya, said part of the challenge is to reeducate the Irianese to let them see their own potential.

He said the Irianese have suffered from a dependent mentality which he attributed to the habit of receiving government funds without feeling obliged to manage and pay back the money.

"I think it's more human to teach them to use their abilities and resources than give them money without any efforts for improvement," he said.

"Local human resources still need empowerment and supervision for effective program implementation." he said.

Another activist from East Nusa Tenggara, E.P. Da Gomez, said he shared the same problem with his Irianese colleague.

To overcome the problem, Gomez suggested a tighter selection procedure before distributing the funds to eligible recipients.

He said locals were enthusiastic toward the program to improve their condition, especially during the economic crisis.

They needed further training to get their participation off the ground since most of them have limited education backgrounds and showed little interest for a sustainable effort, he said. (06)