Sorong, West Papua (ANTARA) - Personnel of the Indonesian Navy's Third Fleet Command (Koarmada) have helped nurture the habit of reading among school-age children in villages of frontier, outermost, and remote regions in West Papua through a mobile library service.
One of the villages availing this mobile library service is Katapop in Salawati Sub-district, Sorong District, Head of the Maritime Potential Affairs at the Koarmada III Headquarters Colonel Eko Hariyanto stated.
The school-age children in Katapop Village are visibly happy with reading books provided by the navy officers at the mobile library vehicle that visits once a week, Hariyanto noted in a statement that ANTARA quoted here on Wednesday.
The children were not only offered books to read but were also taught by the navy personnel joining the mobile library vehicle how to read, calculate, and write, he revealed.
This community service is expected to help cultivate the habit of reading among the children while also dispelling boredom in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that has compelled them to stay homebound and learn from home, he remarked.
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The Koarmada III's mobile library service, with a wide array of books, is offered to students and community members, in general, he pointed out.
ANTARA noted that Indonesian soldiers in Papua and West Papua are necessitated to multitask, as the government works incessantly to address the issue of regional disparities in development between them and other provinces.
To this end, soldiers deployed in these two eastern provinces are mandated to be responsive in seeking solutions to problems and challenges faced by Papuan communities in their daily lives.
The soldiers are required to play the role of problem solvers for the local communities amid their central task to defend the country's territorial integrity and guard the safety of all Indonesians.
Sharing land and sea borders with Papua New Guinea (PNG), Papua and West Papua's geopolitical and geostrategic positions are indubitably important for Indonesia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The development of human resources in Papua and West Papua remains a tricky challenge, as the Human Development Index scores of these provinces remains lower than that of other provinces in Indonesia.
Referring to Indonesia's 2019 Human Development Index, Papua and West Papua recorded scores of 64.7 and 60.84 respectively.
The literacy-related community services offered by the Indonesian soldiers since several years have contributed notably to the regional and central government's endeavors to enhance the quality of human capital in Papua and West Papua. (INE)
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