Mien Sugandhi is willing to support disputed infant

JAKARTA (JP): State Minister of Women's Roles Mien Sugandhi said she wishes to foster the infant girl who is at the center of a custody dispute.

The minister conveyed her wish after visiting the one-month- old girl at the Pasar Rebo hospital in East Jakarta on Friday.

"I feel pity for the child if she is left here without her parents' love," Mien said, as quoted by the Antara news agency.

A woman who gave birth at Pasar Rebo hospital on Aug. 20 has filed a lawsuit against the hospital for switching babies.

Up to Saturday the infant remained at the hospital, an employee there said.

The woman, Nustita Siahaan, and her husband, Mathius Siahaan, have rejected the DNA test results from the National Police Forensic Laboratory which the police say prove the female child is theirs.

Nustita and her family accuse the management of the city-owned hospital of switching her newborn boy with a girl. The management has explained that the midwife attending the birth had reported the wrong sex to Nustita and her husband because a nurse had incorrectly filled out a label indicating the sex of the newborn. The involved parties have been questioned by the police.

The midwife said that as soon as the infant was born, she passed the child to a nurse because it did not cry. The midwife said she was concentrating on the condition of Nustita, whose pregnancy was listed as high-risk at the low-cost hospital.

The minister said she intends to meet with Nustita and her husband to try to coax them into taking the baby home.

"If they do not believe the test results of the police I would be glad to pay for tests at another place, so the family can feel satisfied," she said.

At the nursery Mien looked troubled when holding the infant girl. She also noticed another infant, a boy which had been abandoned by his parents.

Earlier Djarot Pambengkas, an executive of the hospital management, said that funds for taking care of the disputed infant are taken from a budget allocated for abandoned children.

"We always have quite a few of them every year," he said. (anr)