It’s really embarrassing that Indonesia was ranked the second least literate nation out of 61 countries in a recent study, but at least the Jakarta provincial government is taking steps to encourage the capital’s citizens to take up reading more.
Jakarta Vice Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat said yesterday that the provincial government will soon introduce a campaign to convince more Jakartans to read. Crucially, it involves sacrificing watching TV for two hours every evening, from 6pm-8pm, so that citizens can use that time to read books instead.
Djarot said this movement is especially important because he believes kids in the digital age are becoming less and less interested in reading books.
Bless their noble intentions, but the provincial government obviously can’t force people to follow this movement. However, Djarot hopes that Jakarta’s university students can help convince more people to turn off their TVs.
“University students can work together with neighborhood heads to implore citizens to turn off their TVs for at least two hours,” Djarot said, as quoted by Merdeka yesterday.
Well, we can at least hope that this campaign will be successful. What’s on Indonesian TV between 6pm and 8pm every evening besides terrible sinetron anyway?
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