Use our tax properly

I share the same sadness as D.J. Pamudji (The Jakarta Post, July 15: Bloating caused by starvation).

Indonesia is indeed a very rich country however the people are so poor. We don't know how long this has been going on for. While kids have bloated bellies, another channel on TV shows corruption on an enormous scale in the General Elections Commission (KPU) and Ministry of Religious Affairs. What a sad reality. One channel shows people who cannot even have one decent meal for one day and another a billions of rupiah corruption scandal, and it seems the whole institution is implicated.

What is even worse is that the embezzlers are intellectuals, the ones most responsible for helping their fellow countrymen.

I would like to call upon all fellow Indonesians to be critical toward how the tax we pay from our hard-earned money is being used. Remember, we all fight to earn our minute amount of money and must not let it be used wrongly by the government. We also need to start to change our attitudes, which can lead to corrupt practices.

We need to start in our own neighborhood and we have no time to spare. We need to start now. If we don't start to care for our country, nobody will. We can not be certain that our own children or grandchildren will not become the next victim of poverty. And when it happens to us it will be all too late. The embezzlers will still live happily and lavishly. Let's work harder and fight to create a better community. Let's volunteer for our cause. After all, we live, play and work in this beloved country. If this sounds like mere rhetoric to many of us, probably we are destined to make things worse than now.

MUKHTAR CHUA, Jakarta