Poor children in need of education

BEKASI: About 170,000 Bekasi children between the ages of seven to 15 were denied access to education during the past year, a councillor, Zubaidi Asnan, says.

Zubaidi, the Commission D on development affairs chairman, said on Thursday the education agency had found that while the children had wanted to go school, their parents could not afford it.

"This year, the regional budget is mainly allocated for infrastructure development, not education, which needs around Rp 1.5 trillion (US$157 million) a year to subsidize poor students," he was quoted as saying by Tempointeraktif. -- JP