Middle class families 'should help the poor'

JAKARTA (JP): Sociologist Paulus Wirutomo urged middle class families to help the poor in order to minimize social instability as the crisis thrusts millions of Indonesians below the poverty line.

The University of Indonesia political science professor told a seminar on Saturday that more and more people were finding it difficult to feed themselves, a situation which could make it easy for certain groups to incite poor communities to riot.

"The middle class should start helping them. Some middle class people have actually found themselves sliding into poverty because they lost their jobs (in the economic crisis)," Paulus said.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) reported last Tuesday that 37 percent of the population, about 75 million people, was living below the poverty line as of mid-1998 and that as many as 140 million people, or 66 percent of the population, would be below the poverty line by next year should the crisis persist.

Indonesia's middle class, categorized as families with a salary coming from professional, administrative and managerial occupations, accounted for less than 10 percent of the population before the crisis, according to the ILO.

As many as 5.4 million people will have lost their jobs by year's end since January as businesses throughout the country have been forced into bankruptcy.

Among the most affected by the crisis are children. The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has said that multiple threats to the health, well-being and basic education of Indonesia's children constitute an international emergency.

Unicef's executive director Carol Bellamy said some four million Indonesian children belowe the age of two were already severely malnourished and more than 30 percent of the children were at risk of failing to complete primary school.

She also called last month for sustained international aid to save the lives of Indonesian children.

Paulus suggested that middle class families could begin by helping poor families in their own neighborhood. Whatever assistance is extended, the poor would feel emotionally supported and the social gap would be reduced, he argued.

Non-governmental organizations could also help reduce social tensions by offering a forum for people to vent their frustrations so there would be less of a chance for communities to be manipulated into massive rioting.

The seminar was organized by Sinar Wijaya Foundation in cooperation with the National Coordinating Board for Family Planning. It also featured health experts and psychologists. (01)