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)