HI fountain, a waste of money

HI fountain, a waste of money

Recently, the Jakarta administration spent Rp 14 billion to
renovate the fountain at the Hotel Indonesia (HI) traffic circle.

In my opinion, spending Rp 14 billion on renovating a
fountain, while a lot of Indonesians are squeezed by poverty is
both foolish and immoral.

With this amount of money you could set up a factory to make
bajaj (pedicabs) or bicycles or even cooking pans. Or you could
make dormant land productive. In Jakarta alone, 25,000 hectares
of land lies dormant. If this money was spent on growing soybeans
and lesser galangal, we wouldn't have to import these commodities
any more. Soybeans are the raw material for tofu and beancake,
both popular among the people in general, while the lesser
galangal is used for traditional herbal medicine.

TONTOWY DJAUHARI HAMZAH

Jakarta