Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment: Local Governments Must Ensure Policies Benefit the Poor

Jakarta — The Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment (Menko PM), Abdul Muhaimin Iskandar, has urged all regional heads to strengthen commitment, collaboration, and alignment of programmes, and to ensure every policy truly has a tangible impact on the poor, the near-poor, and the middle class. He spoke at a coordination meeting entitled ‘The Role of Local Governments in Optimising the Implementation of Poverty Alleviation and the Elimination of Extreme Poverty’ in Jakarta on Wednesday. He said local governments play a strategic role as the primary driving force in accelerating the elimination of extreme poverty and in reducing national poverty. ‘Local governments are one of the main actors in poverty alleviation. The success of policy is determined by the leadership capacity and the commitment of local governments,’ Muhaimin Iskandar said. Furthermore, through Presidential Instruction (Inpres) Number 8 of 2025, he said, local governments are given a clear mandate to align programmes with national policy, periodically update data, and focus interventions on 16,550 priority desa and kelurahan with the highest vulnerability. Governors act as provincial coordinators by ensuring integration of district/city programmes, nurturing and coordinating the regents and mayors, and reporting policy implementation progress to the Menko PM and the Minister of Home Affairs (Mendagri) every six months. Meanwhile, regents (bupati) and mayors (wali kota) are at the forefront of implementation in the field by drafting operational programmes aligned with regional characteristics, strengthening cross-agency coordination, and ensuring concrete support for priority programmes and community empowerment. ‘The upstream of welfare improvement is the elimination of extreme poverty, while the downstream is empowerment,’ Muhaimin said.