Materi DISKUSI dan DEBAT dalam bahasa inggris"Identity Card for Children and Teenagers, it is necessary or redundant?"

Identity Card for Children and Teenagers, it is necessary or redundant?

In 2016, the national program of residence identification card for children and teenagers or Kartu Identitas Anak (KIA) for all citizens aged under 17 years was announced and shall soon be rolled out in some cities which are Yogyakarta, Solo, Bantul, and Balikpapan.

However, there still remains considerable debate within our society as to the perceived benefits or problems of having such a system in place. Opponents (Penentang) point out a project of this scale is unreasonable in terms of budget numbers which are overwhelming (Besar sekali), estimated at around 8.79 billion rupiahs, as quoted in kompasmedia.com. However, Those Pros make the claim that having an I.D. Card will make these children and teenagers more independent by having this identity card, although, They are still considerably fragile in emotion and psychology in order to use it.

Zudan Arif Fakhrullah, the General Director of Residence and Civil Affairs of Indonesia, states that this project is urgent. His supporters have defended his comments, stressing it will contribute to having an orderly (Tertib) civil administration. Furthermore, they believe that residence identification cards will be very helpful for children and teenagers in some cases are such as in administrative affairs when the child or teenager wants to have a medical checkup, applying for school in other cities, opening a bank account, etc. Afterwards, they claim it is a form of protection especially for children, when they get lost as it will aid in locating their family. Their final argument is claiming that a single residence identification card is required at this point in time for all members of our society without any exception.

For years, The issuing of birth certificates has not and is not consistently reliable, only fifty percent of Indonesian citizens possess a birth certificate. The residence identification card for children and teenagers is needed to substitute for birth certificate as a nationwide recognized government’s document. So the questions arise, is it truly needed for children and teenagers? Or it is only satisfy a political interest which will be abused (Penyalahgunaan) by those who thrive on corruption?. Residence Identification Cards will require much need money to institute and maintain. However, it may provide many necessary functions, especially for administrative affairs.

Questions:

1.     What is your general perspective of providing identity card for children and teenagers?

2.     Is it important or not to have I.D. Cards for children and teenagers, why?

3.     Have you ever encountered a problem about administrative identification when you were a child / teenager? If yes, when and how it was happened?

4.     What is your suggestion to the Government in order to solve identification problem of society as impacted by the lack of birth certificate?

5.     Aren’t there far more important things the government should be focusing their minds and money on?

BENTENG PANYNYUA ENGLISH CLUB

                (Social Institution for Education and Human Resources Development)

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