Wardah wants to narrow gap between rich and poor

Wardah wants to narrow gap between rich and poor

JAKARTA (JP): Noted activist Wardah Hafidz seems to be
everywhere, protesting alongside workers, the urban poor or
pedicab drivers. But for the 47-year-old woman there is no such
thing as giving up.

Her line of work touches almost every aspect of the poor,
making her less and less popular among the authorities. Sometimes
she goes through difficult times, such as being threatened or
even arrested.

"My mother, my husband, my entire family have given me their
full support," said Wardah, the fourth of 10 children.

Coming from a religious family, the native of Jombang, East
Java, decided to take a different path in her life.

Her late father was an informal leader in his community. She
inherited his compassion and love of reading. Her 74-year old
mother is healthy and energetic.

Instead of attending an Islamic institute in Yogyakarta as
requested by her parents, Wardah decided to study English at the
Teachers Training Institute in Malang, where she later took up a
teaching career.

But after only about three years, Wardah, who received her
master's degree from Ball State University in Munchie, Indiana,
in 1983, quit lecturing and moved to the capital to follow her
conscience, to empower the poor. She is now the coordinator of
the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC).

She married fellow activist Wiladi Budiharga in l989. The
couple, who decided not to have children, have been busy with
their social welfare and have dedicated their lives to people's
movements.

Here is an excerpt of an e-mail interview with her:

Question: What made you decide to fight for the poor in the
first place?

Answer: My entire life has been framed by experiences and
values.

I have to admit I cannot discard my background. I was born to
an upper middle-class family. In my opinion, middle-class people
have created their own living mechanism, standard of values and
symbolic environment that have shaped their personalities and
ways of life. There is no other window to view things from a
different perspective.

In the past, I always saw the poor from my own mind-set. At
first, I felt astonished to see their simple and naive lives,
something very exotic and alien to me.

Sometimes it was a shock to witness their coarseness, their
dilapidated and dirty houses, smelly bathrooms or their glasses
and plates. But once I plunged deep into their lives, I learned a
lot of valuable things in life.

When I was a child, I lived in a small village in Jombang,
East Java. My grandparents and my parents possessed a large tract
of paddy fields. I often saw poor farmers wearing dirty clothes
working very hard in our rice fields. I am a Muslim. I was
wondering how these farmers practiced their obligatory religious
rites, like praying five times a day, while they had to work all
day. They could not pray because they had to work.

Q: Did you see a lot of unfairness in your life?

A: I have seen so much injustice and unfairness. It is
humiliating to humankind. Being poor is humiliating. However, we
cannot view poverty only from the physical prospective. The poor
have actually done a lot for the welfare of more fortunate
groups. They are the ones who have sacrificed their land and
property for development projects which benefit urban society.
They are the low-paid construction workers who build roads,
office buildings and other facilities to spoil urbanites. They
are the farmers who cultivate fields and grow rice and
vegetables.

Q: What has been the biggest challenge in your line of work,
mainly as UPC coordinator?

A: My biggest challenge is myself and the people with similar
social backgrounds -- the middle-class group who are proud of
their exclusivity, their broad minds.

We have to work extremely hard to narrow the social gap
between us and our poor friends. We want to always hear and learn
from them. Our friends have long been fooled, terrorized and
humiliated. They bear the ugly stigma of being rioters, thieves
and stupid people. One of our biggest objectives is to free them
from such a social stigma. We want to empower them, to increase
their self-esteem and to arouse their awareness on their basic
rights as human beings and citizens.

Q: How do you cope -- personally and professionally -- with your
problems, including threats?

A: So far, I feel unperturbed by all the terrorization and the
threats because we regard our actions as public discourse. Such
acts will likely stop with strict and close control from the
public and the media.

When problems come, I always try to find a solution and
discuss them with my husband and close friends. The more people I
involve, the more alternatives I get to solve the problems.

Q: What do you see in store for Indonesia's poor?

A: In this transitional period, I view that the poor group is one
of the determining factors in creating a more democratic and new
Indonesia. We cannot give the country to the small elite group.
The poor group have no power or money, but they are the majority.
These people are beginning to understand their civil and
political rights. They no longer want to be belittled by the
government. Moreover, they have a very strong network. In the
next five years, there will be significant changes among the poor
and they will likely play greater roles in the country's
democratization process.

Q: What or who do you think should be blamed for poverty?

A: Poverty is the worst cultural, economic and political product
there is. It manifests unfair distribution of resources in the
widest sense. Poverty reflects a capitalistic system,
exploitation of human beings, nature and the powerless.

In other words, we have to blame the way we view things. The
way we look at people, justice, togetherness. It is the social,
economic, cultural and political systems and values that should
be condemned for causing poverty.

Q: What's your plan for the poor?

A: In short, UPC is trying to improve their welfare by giving
them wide access to education, skills, capital. We want to also
increase their bargaining position, political awareness, their
freedom of expression and participation in any decision-making
process.

Q: Regarding the scraping of the Ministry of Social Services, do
you think the government's decision was correct?

A: In my opinion, the government made the right decision to close
this ministry in line with its policy to give wide autonomy to
provincial authorities in the year 2001. When the time comes, we
will no longer need an agency on a national-scale, let alone a
ministry, to deal with people's welfare. It will be handled by
regional governments and local organizations.

The central government will only need to become a facilitator
and to make the necessary policies to support social welfare
activities. The government, for instance, could give tax
exemptions on all donations and alms given to the needy.

The government could also regulate public accountability of
every social and charitable foundation which deals with social
welfare activities.

I have very little information on the ministry's activities
during the New Order period. I think the ministry was renowned
for being the operator and keeper of the (now defunct)
government-sponsored lottery (SDSB) in which the money generated
was reportedly used in money politics to support the ruling
Golkar party's activities.

During the crisis (l998-l999), the ministry also dealt with
the social safety net program. Based on information from the
field, there were apparently a lot of irregularities in the
distribution of funds which benefited ministry employees and
their cronies.

Q: What do you think of the ministry's responsibilities so far?
Did it meet people expectations or fail them?

A: Like other ministries in the New Order period, the Ministry of
Social Services did very little to help the needy. For example,
during the crisis, there were thousands of children roaming the
streets. The police caught them and sent them to unhealthy
shelters. They were beaten and chased like criminals, I do not
know whether the ministry did its job to help these kids.

Q: In your activities, do you ever get in touch with the
ministry?

A: Never. Up until the middle of this year, UPC had been active
in monitoring the social safety net program. We had been informed
that the Ministry of Social Services was involved in corruption
and collusion in the implementation of the program. We were asked
by some friends to register with the ministry as a monitoring
agency, but we refused because we did not want to be trapped in
bureaucracy. We did it together with the community.

Q: What do you think of the ministry's relations with NGO's so
far?

A: Like other ministries and government institutions, the
Ministry of Social Services always regards NGOs as implementers
of its programs. They never consider us equal partners in the
planning, designing, implementation, monitoring or evaluation of
a program. Up to the present, NGOs that closely cooperate with
the ministry are those which can tolerate the corruption and
collusion.

Q: If the ministry is completely abolished, can NGOs and the
community take over its duties?

A: As I have mentioned before, social work should be done by the
people. In reality, they have already done it. (ste/raw)