Australia gives $3.65m for Unicef's Indonesian programs

Australia gives $3.65m for Unicef's Indonesian programs

JAKARTA (JP): Australia announced on Thursday a contribution
of US$3.65 million to support the activities of the United
Nations Children's Emergency Fund (Unicef) in Indonesia.

The aid will support Unicef's safe motherhood, sanitation,
education and nutrition programs in Indonesia.

Some $1.8 million of the aid will be used for the
Complementary Feeding Initiative. This program provides
micronutrient-rich food to 110,000 infants in East and West Nusa
Tenggara, East Timor and South Sulawesi.

"This initiative will provide each infant with a two-kilogram
ration of complementary food each month for a six month-period,"
said Steve Aswin, a Unicef nutrition officer. He said the
production cost for each kilogram of food was Rp 10,000 ($1.45).

Another $1.06 million will be used for the Back to School
campaign, aimed at preventing children from dropping out of
school.

The first phase of the campaign led to a misperception among
the public. "People thought (school) tuition fees were also free,
and not only the registration fees," Unicef representative for
Indonesia and Malaysia Stephen J. Woodhouse said.

The campaign will last until next May, and will be followed by
Unicef's school enrollment campaign in June. "The second campaign
will emphasize the importance of remaining in school, and will
also facilitate transparency in the use of funds and the
selection of scholarship recipients," Ari Boediharjo, a Unicef
official, said.

The Asian Development Bank and the World Bank have provided a
$500 million loan for student scholarships.

The Safe Motherhood Program will use $792,000 to reduce
maternal mortality rates. The program will help promote improved
hygiene, including the prevention of diarrhea, increasing the
supply of clean water and improving sanitary conditions. The
program will focus on poor rural households in West Java.

"Health and education are the fundamental blocks of social and
economic development in any country, because they are inexorably
linked," Australia Deputy Head of Mission Leslie Rowe said.

"Australia has responded to the crisis through a range of
measures to try and alleviate the social impacts on Indonesia's
poorest people," Rowe said.

Woodhouse said Unicef appreciated Australia's contribution to
its efforts to prevent the loss of a generation through
malnutrition, school dropouts and infant mortality.

Unicef has shifted the focus of its work from the eastern
parts of Indonesia to the densely-populated Java since the 1997
economic crisis hit. "The economic crisis mainly affected those
in Java and the big cities," Woodhouse said.

"So far Unicef had spent more than $24 million for its
activities in Indonesia. For the period from 1998 to 2000,
Australia had contributed $12.72 million," Woodhouse said.

Woodhouse said Unicef was presently focusing its programs on
towns in Java where the crisis had hit poor households the
hardest.

However, the organization is also working to help refugees in
many of the country's troubled areas.

Unicef recently held an immunization program in East Timor,
during which the province's conflicting groups halted their
fighting.

Unicef also has staff in Atambua, East Nusa Tenggara, to help
refugees from East Timor.

"We don't have any staff in Aceh yet, but in a few weeks we
will send a team to see what we can do there," he said. (05)