1,640 UMK Students Deployed for Uninhabitable Housing Verification

Of the thousands of KKN students, they are planned to be deployed to 132 villages/urban wards in Kudus Regency and nine villages in Karanganyar District, Demak Regency.

Kudus (ANTARA) — As many as 1,640 students taking part in the community service programme (KKN) in Kudus and Demak regencies, Central Java, will be involved in the verification and validation of uninhabitable homes in their KKN areas.

“This is the second year, after last year we carried out a similar activity in cooperation with the Housing and Settlement Areas Office of Central Java Province,” said UMK Rector Darsono at the KKN UMK deployment ceremony at the Kudus Regency Pendopo on Tuesday.

He said that last year UMK’s KKN programme even received recognition with the highest score from the Central Java Provincial Government, achieving a performance index of 140 per cent.

Darsono expressed hope that the provincial award would spur this year’s KKN students to perform even better than their predecessors.

Of the thousands of participating students, the plan is to deploy them to 132 villages/urban wards in Kudus Regency and nine villages in Karanganyar District, Demak Regency.

For this reason, Darsono asked village heads and ward heads to guide the students in gaining life experience in the field, after the students had previously been equipped with hard skills in their respective fields. They are now complementing these with life skills within the community.

He advised the students to uphold the good name of their alma mater UMK, prioritise teamwork, and avoid selfish attitudes from personal, team and programme perspectives.

Meanwhile, Kudus Regent Sam’ani Intakoris expressed hope that UMK KKN participants could identify problems in the villages, whether related to waste management, food security, village governance, or extreme poverty.

“Students are also involved in independently collecting data on uninhabitable homes (RTLH), so that the data can later be synchronised with data obtained so far from the village authorities and officials,” he said.

The data resulting from the KKN students’ verification and validation will subsequently be processed by the Regional Development Planning, Research and Innovation Agency (Bapperida) to serve as the basis for proposing habitable housing renovation programmes, whether to the regional government, the provincial government, or through private companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes.

He encouraged students to explore local potential, both in business and local culture.

“If business actors are still found to face difficulties with permits or funding, please facilitate them with the relevant regional apparatus organisations (OPD) so they can be assisted with the process. All OPDs have been instructed to help these UMK KKN students,” he said.

He expressed hope that the students living among the community during their KKN would not merely fulfil their campus obligations, but could also help enhance village self-reliance in line with the KKN theme: “UMK makes an impact in building self-reliant and sustainable villages”.