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)