Nurture understanding

Mr. Al Workman, unfortunately, you tend to make a sweeping generalization (Sept. 12) that relatively few Indonesians exercise personal discretion or initiative. You also brush all Indonesians with a single stroke saying that they lack compassion.

No doubt your distressing experience at the airport could make anybody feel upset and angry.

I have experienced slightly different problems at the airport. No free trolleys were to be found at the departure hall but one could easily see some porters holding on to empty trolleys. The solution was simple. I paid a thousand rupiah to one of the porters and he would only be too pleased to part with the trolley.

Without being too rigid, you could also have employed some such method to overcome your difficulty. After all, we should remember that those employees at the airport are poorly paid and a few hand-outs would greatly relieve their daily burden of making both ends meet.

In short, we should be using our common sense and at the same time applying a little compassion towards our poor brethren in whichever country we serve.

About your statement that Indonesians lack discretion, let's take the case of the "three-in-one" kids on Jakarta city roads. I used to be amazed at their natural "enterprise" in earning some extra income, finding loopholes to circumvent the governmental regulations.

We have observed that the City Police, sometimes, round up these offenders and for a few days, the roads are free of these street kids. This means that if the Police really mean business, it wouldn't be very difficult for them to ensure compliance of the rules.

I believe the police may be taking a lenient view in this matter only because they exercise their discretion in the use of authority, combining it with sympathy towards these poor "three- in-one" kids.

D. CHANDRAMOULI

Jakarta