Fajar, a 14-year-old student who has just graduated from junior high school SMP 70, was chatting with his classmate Fitri on the floor of the Jakarta History Museum, which is in the basement of the National Monument (Monas) in Central Jakarta.

'I don't want to see the dioramas, which I've already seen so many times on my elementary school field trips that I've memorized them all,' Fajar said.

He said his motivation to go to the museum was just to find a comfortable place to hang out with his friends during the school holidays.

'It's very hot outside,' he said. 'It's also too expensive to sit in a café, when I can sit in this cool place almost all day long for only Rp 2,000 [20 US cents]?'

Furthermore, Fitri complained that the museum's tour guides did not offer visitors anything interesting.

'Once, a guide took us to see the burung garuda [eagle-like mythical beast] national emblem and explained the principles of Pancasila like giving a lesson on PKN [civic education] at school,' Fitri said.

The testimony of these two students reflects a lack of attractions at the museum and the other eight supervised by the Jakarta Tourism and Culture Agency ' the Ceramics and Visual Arts Museum, the Wayang Museum, the Bahari (Maritime) Museum, the 1945 Joang (Struggle) Museum, the Textile Museum, the National Museum, the National Monument and the Onrust Island Museum.

Knowledge guides, according to historian Adolf Heuken S.J., are essential for museums.

'Unfortunately, most museum guides have not mastered the techniques of presentation in delivering interesting information to visitors,' he told The Jakarta Post.

Separately, agency chief Arie Budiman said a lack of attention to cultural infrastructure had caused the Jakarta Legislative Council (DPRD) to allocate an inadequate budget to improve the quality of museums in the city.

'Although Governor Joko Widodo said he prioritized cultural programs, the mechanism of the budget proposal is not simple, while the DPRD apparently focuses more on physical infrastructure than culture,' Arie said.

Arie said his agency had created several programs to improve the quality of the nine museums under its supervision.

'We have provided training on guide techniques and foreign language skills for museum guides. Unfortunately, we can't conduct this training regularly due to a budget shortage,' Arie said.

Arie said that currently the museums also lacked permanent curators. (ogi)

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