College graduates signed up to fight poverty

College graduates signed up to fight poverty

JAKARTA (JP): The government plans to recruit more college graduates to help alleviate poverty in rural areas, Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief said yesterday.

Latief told a gathering of public relations officials from various government ministries that the graduates will be assigned to teach villagers how to make money.

The government has so far placed about 2,000 university graduates in impoverished areas and transmigration sites on the outer islands.

"They have been quite useful in improving village economies," Latief said. He added that most of those sent to rural areas are experienced in the fields of agriculture and fishery.

"This success has encouraged the government to intensify the training of more university graduates to be placed in rural areas," he said.

The program of employing college graduates in rural areas was designed by the Ministry of Manpower in cooperation with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Transmigration and several state universities.

Its main objectives are to help those university graduates not absorbed into the labor market and to enhance economic growth in rural areas.

Program participants are recruited from state universities and trained for three months in entrepreneurship and management. They earn around Rp 300,000 ($135) a month and are expected to be able to start businesses of their own in about nine months.

The minister said that the government would recruit and train about 12,500 graduates for the program in order to help ease unemployment among university graduates.

"If we can place around 12,000 university graduates every year, the number of jobless university graduates will certainly decrease, economic growth in rural areas will improve, the migration of villagers to urban areas will slow and crime in urban areas will be reduced," he said. (rms)