Aid program for poor villages goes on despite obstacles

Aid program for poor villages goes on despite obstacles

By Prapti Widinugraheni

JAKARTA (JP): The government aid program (IDT) set up to alleviate poverty in poor villages will continue this year, despite having encountered numerous obstacles in just nine months of existence.

President Soeharto has personally admitted that the program, instigated in March 1994 through presidential instruction, faces big problems, including monetary "deviations".

"However, they have been immediately overcome by the regional governments. I would like to pay respect to the heads of these sub-districts and villages that have worked to the best of their ability -- the IDT has reached its objective," he said when presenting the 1995-96 state budget to the House of Representatives on Jan. 5.

Under the program, each of the villages categorized as "under- developed" will receive allocations of Rp 20 million (US$9,200), as capital to start small businesses, until they are sufficiently above the official national poverty line, which is measured on the individual basis of nutritional intake of 2,100 calories per day.

According to the official statistics, 27 million of 190 million Indonesians still live below the poverty line.

Despite its noble purpose, reports of embezzlement have plagued the funds since its inception last year and several local government officials have already been removed or punished for stealing program funds.

In addition, there have been problems with villagers not knowing how exactly the funds are supposed to be used, often resulting in them saving the money in banks and profiting from the interest. Many villages also have difficulties in identifying the best ways to invest the money.

Oka Mahendra, a House member from commission II which oversees home affairs, said he was "very pleased" to hear Pak Harto thanking the village and subdistrict heads who did a good job managing the IDT.

"He seems to be very persuasive in handling the deviations," said the legislator from the government-backed Golkar faction.

Hamzah Haz, Chairman of the House's United Development Party (PPP) faction, pointed out that even with flaws here and there, the program should not be shut down.

He added that the system was too new to be evaluated and suggested instead that the government "punish the wrongdoers or improve the system"

"But the villages have a stack of money and it only takes their creativity to figure out a good way to develop their villages," he said.

Hamzah said that through the IDT program, villagers have a chance to make their villages a center of economic activity -- one of the "multiple effects" that are expected to result from the program.

For the 1994-1995 fiscal year, 20,633 villages, or 31.5 percent of the total number of villages in the country, fell into the "under-developed" category.

Starting in the 1995-1996 fiscal year, however, this number will change due to changes in the statistical method used by the Central Bureau of Statistics in defining an "under-developed" village.

The number of IDT-villages now stands at 22,097, of which 15,768 are located outside of Java.

The government also said that of the total number of under- developed villages, 2,320 consist of fewer than 50 families.

Given that one village receives Rp 20 million from the IDT, a village with 50 families would get an average of Rp 400,000 ($184) per family -- an amount, according to the government, big enough to start a small business. These 2,320 villages would only be given the IDT funds once, assuming that the new businesses will lift each family above the national poverty line.

In order to monitor the handling of program money, the government has announced that it will make additional funds available for supervising activities in remote areas to make sure that the money actually reaches the hands of those in need, free of undue deductions made by corrupt officials.

Taking into account these changes, the government will allocate a total of Rp 473.7 billion in IDT funds, a 21.7 percent increase compared to the Rp 389.2 billion spent this fiscal year.

President Soeharto in his speech also announced that for IDT- villages, an additional Rp 330 billion from the state budget would be provided to build facilities and infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, clean water and local sanitation.

The program would last for three years and cover more than 7,800 least developed villages, he said.

Oka said the new infrastructure projects were necessary to support the already existing projects funded by the IDT.

"The development of these facilities is a continuation and expansion of previous projects," he said.