Nurture understanding

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