Although The Jakarta Post dedicated one page (March 7, p. 21) to family
planning issues in the Jakarta region, the government should implement
a rule whereby families throughout Indonesia (and not only Jakarta) are
urged to have two children only.
Putting up gigantic billboards to curb the population explosion just does not work.
Well-informed family planning officers should go out in the field and
do their job by informing and teaching the population about birth
control.
The government should urge provincial governments to actively step up
family planning policies whereby the provincial budgets should allocate
a certain percentage to family planning issues.
Each province should force its population to actively participate to curb the population explosion by having only two children.
An article in one of the newspapers stated that there are 5.4 million
street children nationwide and that is, of course, sad but if President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had during his first term instructed his
government to implement strict family planning policies, at least half
of that percentage of street kids would not have been born.
The Family Planning Agency should focus on slum areas in big cities
and the poor on the outer islands. These people have no access to family planning pills, shots or other devices. They breed like
rabbits and they are not to blame. Clerics should be involved to actively urge the community, during their sermons, to seriously adhere to birth control.
Focusing family planning policies in big cities only is a good
beginning but what about the poor living in the outer islands and
outlying villages?
The only province quite successful with family planning policies is
North Sulawesi where the provincial government actively focuses on the
population living in the outlying villages where midwives are sent
regularly to actively urge women to have one child only.
I have witnessed on several occasions when I visited a small village in
Minahassa that farmer’s wives panic when the midwife runs out of
birth-control pills, shots or other devices.
The farmers in that province are very well-informed that having more than one child means that they have to work twice as hard
to come up with funds to feed, clothe and educate their children.
In Java, the poor just do not care how many children they spawn, they just send these kids out to beg in the streets.
They then become a burden on society where the well-to-do have to come
up with funds for housing and educational facilities to accommodate
these street children. I blame the government for its lax family
planning policies and hereby urge them to seriously tackle the
population explosion.
Lynna van der Zee-Oehmke
Bogor, West Java
