Indonesia needs law that encourages people to read
Indonesia needs law that encourages people to read
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia needs a law on the production,
taxation, distribution and sale of books that makes them
affordable to most Indonesian citizens, according to a noted
publisher.
"It's high time that Indonesia had such a law," Doddy Yudhista
said on Thursday while speaking on next month's state-sponsored
Book Month.
Book Month will be opened by President Soeharto in the West
Kalimantan capital of Pontianak on May 2, which is National
Education Day.
The agenda will consist of activities, aimed at encouraging
people to improve their reading habits, including book
exhibitions, writing festivals, and the first National Congress
on Books.
Doddy said that more affordable books would encourage the
habit of reading which was, he said, still deplorably low, partly
because of the high cost of books.
He said that problems concerning books could be dealt with
properly if book affairs were managed by a single institution.
Currently, book affairs are handled by at least three
different institutions: the Ministry of Education and Culture,
the Ministry of Industry, and the Association of Indonesian
Publishers.
"Each institution has different interests and faces different
problems," he added.
Doddy said Indonesians spent more of their leisure time
listening to music than reading. "Indonesians buy 500 million
cassettes every year but buy only 15 million of books a year," he
said.
He said that increasing the number of libraries and reading
groups would help improve people's interest in reading.
Meanwhile Wahyudi Ruwiyanto, president of the state-owned
Balai Pustaka publishing company, also lamented the low interest
in reading among Indonesians.
"Few people go to libraries and bookstores," he said.
Wahyudi speculated that the multiple choice testing methods
used extensively in school and college tests not only tempted
students to guess at the right answer but was also to blame for
the low interest in reading among Indonesians.
"Students are pretty confident about sitting a multiple
choice-type test without having read any book beforehand," he
said.
He suggested that teachers return to the conventional testing
method, locally known as the "essay" method, which, he said, made
students think.
"The essay system compels students to study and read their
books," he said.
Agam Suchad, head of the book affairs section of the ministry
of education and culture, said the low interest in reading among
Indonesians was mainly due to the fact that books were very
expensive.
"Books are expensive because of the inefficient distribution
system," he said.
Books are mostly printed in Jakarta, making the transport cost
to the regions very high, he said. "Ideally, books would be
printed in the provinces to minimize transport costs," he said.
He said there was a tendency for publishers only to publish
school textbooks because they were more profitable.
According to Agam, it was only in major cities, such as
Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya, that people had a high interest in
reading. (imn)