Chinese in Singkawang support family planning

Text and photos by Lewa Pardomuan

SINGKAWANG, W. Kalimantan (JP): An old Chinese saying states, "The more children you have the wealthier you will be."

Although most Indonesians now believe that a small family has two children, the Indonesian-Chinese in Singkawang and the neighboring districts prefer to have three or four children. They say that having only two does not seem to be enough.

Now that the idea is gradually disappearing, many Indonesians of Chinese descent believe that the more children they have the more suffering they will face.

The new view has flourished among the people following their acceptance of the birth control program which was for a long time regarded as taboo.

A popular belief, "Problems behind mosquito nets are the business of husbands and wives," has also lost its meaning.

Hardship is among the factors which has made the Chinese here think twice before deciding to have big families. Having a small family means better education and food for the children.

The people, long known for their reluctance to use birth control, have turned out to be the active participants in the government sponsored Family Parenthood Program.

The Chinese living in Singkawang, the capital of Sambas regency, constitute 54 percent of the 75,000 population. The affluent are found in business offices, shops and markets, while the poor work at the pepper, rubber and orange plantations, are fishermen or work for timber companies, and mainly live on the outskirts or in the villages.

About 70 percent of the Chinese in Sambas have jobs other than trading.

In West Kalimantan, the Chinese make up 14 percent of the population and are regarded as indigenous along with the Dayak (41 percent) and Malay (39 percent).

The people's participation in the program in 13 districts in Sambas regency ranges between 20 percents and 75 percent of the Indonesian-Chinese in each area.

Abdul Gafar, field coordinator of the Sambas office of the National Family Planning Coordination Board (BKKBN) told The Jakarta Post recently that the authorities did not coerce the Chinese into taking part in the birth control program.

"There is no intention to restrict the number of Indonesian- Chinese here, just to stop them from doing business," he said.

Funeral

Gafar said that the program entered Singkawang as early as 1974 but it was not until 1987 that the Chinese were approached.

With special programs, the office intensified its efforts in 1990 to encourage the people to join the family planning program. The office allocates Rp 350,000 each year to organize the annual meeting.

BKKBN approached funeral agencies for permission to use their premises as meeting places because of the population's deference to them.

Gafar said the campaigns used to receive lukewarm response because the Chinese claimed that they did not have time to leave their businesses, but when the funeral agencies became involved the response improved, he said.

The people's high respect for the funeral agencies is obvious because those who can't attend the meeting are willing to pay a kind of "fine", he added.

He said that language problems have also been overcome by involving campaigners of Chinese descent especially when organizing in the rural areas.

Gafar said that the involvement of the Chinese in the campaign had been proven to be effective. In the past, the non-Chinese campaigners who organized door-to-door campaigns were often mistaken as tax collectors, he added.

He said the younger people are also encouraged to be better informed by organizing speech contests about family planning.

Lili Bastian, a trained midwife who is also a campaigner, said that in the past many women believed that contraception pills or injections would cause womb cancer. Now that the people's knowledge of the family planning program is better, such fears have disappeared.

Lili, herself a Chinese-descendant, acknowledged that the husband's parents also played an important role in the decision on whether their daughter-in-laws should take part in the program because many couples still live with their parents.

"Not many fall into this category because many have become independent," she added.

Lili said that the campaigns also aim to change husbands' worry that sterilization would create a kind of "emptiness" when having sex with their wives.

Bong Cin Nen, a young campaigner, said that the door-to-door campaigns were the most effective way to introduce the family planning program to the local people. These campaigns, he said, enable the campaigners and the people to have a thorough discussion about the program.

Bong said that fathers must also be convinced about the benefit of taking part in the program because they also have a say in every decision involving family life.

Important

Bong, who graduated from senior high school in 1987, said the fact that many Chinese in the regency are poor was why birth control was deemed necessary.

Bong Wui Kong, a member of the Sambas Council, told the Post that the family planning program was a success. The prevailing problem, he said, was how to reach the people living in the rural areas who could not attend the campaign because they work all day.

Some people in rural areas still believe that using contraception is taboo and that unscrupulous officials often overcharge the program participants, he added.

Lili explained that sterilization was among the birth control methods used in the program, but said that it was only encouraged for women of a certain age who have certain number of children. She said that injection, intra-uterine device (IUD) and the pill are the most popular means of birth control.

She said that the pill is the favorite because injection sometimes led to bleeding while IUDs can be painful.

Lili said that family planning here could mean having four children rather than the recommended two.

"Having two children is often considered not sufficient. The people think that it would be better for them to have three or four because if one of the children dies they still have the others," she said.