Singaporeans look down on Indonesia

Singaporeans look down on Indonesia

I am an Indonesian who is studying in Singapore. I am
writing this letter to encourage all Indonesians to
be more hard-working and be more mindful of the future. We
have to compete with other countries in the world and show
them that we can compete with them when it comes to quality human
resources.

We have nearly 240 million people, so we have a big pool of
potential talent. The reason why I am writing this
letter is because I get reminded all time by my humanities
teacher here, who frequently points out all the bad things about
Indonesia, and also about Indonesians, but unfortunately her
points are quite true.

There was one day she said that most the Multi-National
Companies (MNCs) are interested in building their headquarters in
Singapore, because Singapore has a lot more skilled workers. And
she also mentioned that most MNCs are wary of setting up in
developing countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and other
countries.

Then she continued, for example, in Indonesia, although
Indonesia has a lot of people to employ in the manufacturing
sector, the workers are not skilled, they do not have the ability
to carry out tasks that require some knowledge of Information
Technology (IT) or most any other work that requires intelligent
analysis. She has actually spoken poorly of Indonesia on numerous
occasions.

I know that Indonesia's economy is not in a good situation,
but at least we can improve our education. One way to solve the
education problem is that we have to promote compulsory learning
in school instead of working at the early age. Do not encourage
working overseas as a maid. We should encourage them to continue
their studies, at least until senior high school, and then, they
can get better jobs in the future.

Actually, when my teacher looks down on Indonesia, I always
feel so angry toward her. It is humiliating for me as she
mentions these things to all the other students, most of whom are
Singaporeans, and I am the only Indonesian in the class.

There are still so many other ways that Singaporeans look down
on Indonesia. I hope we can improve in our education by promoting
more and more scholarships to study overseas. Besides improving
our education level, it can also improve our economy eventually.

I hope the government will consider all of my suggestions and
I am confident that we can do it for our country.

FENTY ANG
Singapore