Govt urged to promote reading habit

Govt urged to promote reading habit

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In a bid to cultivate a reading habit on behalf of the public,
the government and local administrations need to pour more funds
into the improvement and establishment of public libraries
throughout the archipelago, head of the National Library Dady
Rahmananta has said.

"Reading makes a huge contribution to intellectual capacity,
because, unlike watching audio-visual material, it allows people
to develop their imagination, thereby exercising their brain,"
Dady said on the sidelines of a seminar on improving reading and
learning habits on Monday.

The government, according to Dady, ought to establish as many
libraries as possible so that people could borrow books for free.

According to Sumengen Sutomo, chairman of Develop Indonesia
Foundation, public libraries were available in only 0.5 percent
of villages and districts throughout Indonesia.

Worse still, most libraries across the country were neglected
or had no new book supply.

"Such a situation has dissuaded people from visiting
libraries," Dady said. "A library is indeed a cost center, not a
profit center, by its very nature, so it requires a lot of
money."

He added that the quality of education in Indonesia was
previously more advanced than that in Malaysia, but now it was
lagging behind.

"Previously, Malaysians went to Indonesian universities, but
now the situation is reversed," he said.

A paper provided by Bebi Sutomo, one of the speakers in the
seminar, said that promoting the reading habit was an important
factor in education, but it had never been a top priority in the
government's national educational policy. Consequently, the
country's illiteracy rate was still alarmingly high.

According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), in 2000 the
illiteracy rate of females and males of 10 years and over in
rural areas reached a staggering 40 percent in Papua, 30 percent
in West Nusa Tenggara, 30 percent in East Java and 30 percent in
South Sulawesi.

Meanwhile, the 1997 International Education Assessment Test
indicated that the reading and writing ability of Indonesian
elementary school students was only 36 percent, putting Indonesia
as second-lowest above Venezuela, which scored 33.9 percent.

In 2001, a UN Development Program (UNDP) report showed that
Indonesia's human development index (HDI) -- whose indicators
were life expectancy rate, education quality and gross domestic
product -- was so low that it plunged the country to 102nd
position -- worse than Vietnam -- which ranked 101st.

However, those figures did not prod the government into
incorporating the promotion of reading habits into its national
programs.

Meanwhile, First Secretary of the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta
Zhao Xucai said that his government had come to regard reading
promotion as one of the key factors in poverty alleviation in the
country.

Since 1995 the Chinese government has introduced the
"Prospering Villages through Sciences and Education" project,
targeting farmers in rural areas. By 1999, the project had helped
to achieve an economic improvement of over 1.5 billion yuan
(about US$168 million).