Rich people urged to give donations to city orphanages

JAKARTA (JP): Councilors and city social services office officials appealed to the capital's rich yesterday to spare part of their fortunes to help 54 penniless and overcrowded orphanages.

The orphanages are badly in need of donations, they said, after being ignored by their usual donors in recent months due to the prolonged monetary crisis.

Soeparno, the head of Commission E for social welfare affairs, said the donations were needed to cover expenses like meals and school fees.

He said financial cutbacks had forced the social services office, which supervised the orphanages, to consider reducing the frequency of the orphans' meals.

"The office is thinking of raising the value of each meal given to the children from the Rp 2,000 at present to Rp 3,000 but cutting their frequency from three meals to two a day," he said.

The office said it could not raise the quality and quantity of the meals at the same time.

Soeparno said the idea was not suitable.

"Children should have three meals a day regardless of the financial pressure," he said.

Another councilor on Commission E, Agus Waluyo from the Golkar faction, said the commission recently received a report saying that, for financial reasons, many orphanages were cutting their routine expenses, including buying milk for the children.

"They can't even afford to spare money to buy milk for the babies," he said yesterday.

The social affairs office's head, Emon Setia Sumantri, said yesterday that most orphanages had lost at least 50 percent of their regular and occasional donors.

"It is very hard for the orphanages to cover their routine expenses without financial support from others," he said.

Emon, however, could not put a figure on the donations received by the orphanages which are home to at least 6,000 children and teenagers.

Official data shows that the office received Rp 54.8 billion from the public in the 1997/1998 fiscal year. Of this, Rp 19 billion was given directly to the orphanages.

Waluyo, the head of the office's social center supervision unit, said that before the monetary crisis deteriorated late last year, each orphanage received about Rp 2 million to Rp 3 million a month in donations from individuals or groups.

"Now I guess the value of the donations given directly by the public each month has dropped by 50 percent," he said.

Waluyo said the financial situation had become even more difficult for the orphanages during the last month as they had to spend more money to finance the children's school entry.

"The problem is that most of the children, due to their limited educational record, have to go to private schools which charge the students more than the state-owned ones," he said.

"I wish the private schools could give discounts or exempt orphanage children from paying the entrance or semester fees," Waluyo added.

Another consequence of the monetary crisis is that many homeless and unemployed people are sending their children to orphanages to save money. (cst)