Vote for Me - 1

If I were the Head of Sorong Selatan Regency, I would do the following:

Firstly, I would build the hotmix streets from Teminabuan, the capital town, to the places where some people live. Ergh … maybe not hotmix, a strong, good street would suffice ;-). Expensive? For sure, yes. But it could help drive the prices down in the inland, in those faraway kampongs. It is the people in the inland that suffer the most from bad infrastructure. It makes no sense to me that the people in Ayawasi pay 3 times higher for basic goods than the people in Teminabuan which is only 3 hours (120km) away. So outrageous! And these people by the way are by no means rich. They have no gold, no copper, no nickel, nothing there. How do they get by with their lives then? Only God knows.

In line with this plan, I would make affordable public transportation available to the inland. How? I would buy some buses which will run regularly with sensible fares. This would serve as benchmark for other private-owned public transportation companies (or individuals) that are now controlling the public transport in absence of the government involvement.

I’m aware of the vastness of the region. Sometimes, as I wrote earlier, there are only a few houses in one kampong. That could be sorted out earlier by looking at the number of people living in one place. I would not encourage people to live that far away in the middle of nowhere in spite of their sentimental reason of the past. I hate to see people in Seya walk for hours to get 2 buckets of water. I can’t stand the fact that they have to walk for 8 hours through the jungle to carry the materials to build their houses or stuffs that can’t be made in the village. Don’t tell me that they love the place so much that they are willing to endure their hard situation. Get real, people! This island is so big. There’s enough place for everyone. Oh, am I being insensitive and naïve here?

Secondly, I would make the public transportation to and from outside the region as cheap as possible so that the Papuan people can go visit other places as often as they could. Why? They would be able to see how people outside the island go about their lives. Perhaps they could learn something. I couldn’t stand people who think that they are the center of the universe. Pricey transportation cost will cut them off from the rest of the world. As much as I respect their way of lives now, I believe there are many things that they could learn from others.

Thirdly, I would invite the highly competent teachers in the inland and pay them five times higher than their colleagues in towns. Three times normal salary is to compensate for the higher good prices in the inland and twice the price is to reward their willingness to stay in the remote, lonely, difficult-to-access inland. As the prices go down as the result of the would-be-good infrastructure, their salary would be three times higher.

But, listen up, if they skip classes for more than 2 weeks (with no apparent reasons) they should be fired right away. I can't be more serious. Yeah, I haven’t talked about this phenomenon of teachers leaving their post of duty for weeks or even for months. They often go to town to do their own personal business. I know one teacher who has gone for 2 years! Dear goodness! So I smiled when I read Kompas several days ago about teachers in the inland of Papua who complain about their situation to the first lady.