Economic crisis drives Indonesia into nutritional disaster

By Rita A. Widiadana

JAKARTA (JP): The long-lasting economic crisis is likely to lead the majority of Indonesians to nutritional disaster because of the rocketing prices of staple foods and other basic commodities, said an executive of the United Children's Fund (Unicef).

Stephen J. Woodhouse, Unicef's chief representative for Indonesia and Malaysia, said such a condition would result in a major setback in the development of quality human resources.

"For most of the Indonesian poor as well as for a larger segment of the general public, insufficient food intake and quality will affect their working productivity and levels of growth among children," Woodhouse said.

Subsequently, the lives of vulnerable members of society including pregnant women, infants and their breast-feeding mothers, under-fives, school age children and adolescents alike are in great danger.

"Even before the present crisis, Indonesia already faced a very critical situation," Woodhouse said.

Unicef data reveals that about eight million children under five are seriously malnourished. About 14 percent of the country's babies are born underweight. More than 45 percent of one-year-old children are also malnourished.

Unicef also discloses that the distressing figure of about 270,000 children under five die every year, while millions others suffer from vitamin A, iodine and iron deficiencies.

In the present situation in which nutritious foods are scarce and expensive, people will suffer more.

Even the prices of tofu and tempeh, cheap sources of protein, will increase if the government eliminates its subsidy for soybeans.

Fish will basically become the main source of protein. "Yet, we are very concerned because businesspeople would think of exporting fish in return for fast foreign exchange," he said.

Woodhouse warned that the negative impact of malnutrition in childhood was irreversible. "Whereas adults can recover from temporary food shortages and poor dietary intake, the ravages of malnutrition in young children are irreversible."

Between six and 12 months of age is a crucial period in a child's life because this is when cognitive, physical and social development of a child takes place, he said.

Failure to protect this age group during the current economic crisis will result in irreparable damage to the human resources development potential of Indonesia for decades to come.

Malnutrition affects children's physical condition and their ability to think would be very much reduced because brain growth would be affected.

In addition to nutrition and health problems, Unicef also identified an alarming situation in the education system.

"We feel so anxious that this economic crisis has badly affected education activities," said Woodhouse.

Before the crisis, 2.1 million children failed to complete elementary school education every year despite the fact that net school attendance in l995/1996 at elementary school level had reached 95 percent. Yet, even with this relatively high level of formal education, still almost 18 million children between seven years and 18 years do not presently attend school.

"Now, we anticipate there will be additional three million elementary school dropouts. This could be a tragedy for the country's human resources development program," Woodhouse said.

"Heading toward the 21th century, Indonesia has to compete with other neighboring countries in preparing for high-quality and talented human resources," he said.

He said the development of human resources in Indonesia still lagged behind other countries in the region such as Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

Woodhouse said the current condition was mainly caused by economic mismanagement, collusion and cronyism as well as discrepancies in many government policies regarding food distribution, health and education.

He expected that the new cabinet would be able to find a credible solution to the country's problems.

"They must be able to come up with rational and consistent measures to prevent people's living conditions from deteriorating. Any program must be designed to benefit them," he said.

He acknowledged that several crash programs aiming to ease people's suffering were underway, including the provision of basic commodities to the needy and intensive-labor projects.

"Such programs are helpful, but they are only some of the makeshift measures which do not solve the current problems in a comprehensive way," Woodhouse said.

Labor-intensive projects, for instance, are mainly intended to help newly unemployed people, victims of mass layoffs. Besides, the duration of such projects is also limited depending on existing funds, he said.

"The government seems to overlook the already poor farmers, pedicab drivers, female laborers and other low-income groups, who are now living in destitution because of the spiraling prices of basic goods," he said.

Unicef and the Indonesian government are also working on a short-term project to help the poor obtain low-price complementary food for their children aged between six months and 24 months.

As an initial step, Unicef has provided US$200,000 to purchase nutritious complementary baby food produced for this joint program by PT Indofood.

"We will continue seeking international funds to finance this project," he said.

The project is now funded by several countries, such as Australia and Canada as well as international agencies including the United Nation Development Program and the World Health Organization.

The baby food packages are being distributed to nine regencies in West, Central and East Java. Officials from the coordinating minister for social welfare's office, Unicef, regional authorities and local community-based organizations will tightly supervise the distribution lines.

"We have skipped the central and provincial government levels in distributing the aid to bypass bureaucratic procedures," Woodhouse said.

In the past, abundant food and health packages handed over by donor countries were reportedly distributed inefficiently. Some of the packages barely reached the targeted recipients.

"This is, of course, only a short-term action to receive the impaired people. Under the United Nations' scheme, we will set up extensive programs to help Indonesian people deal with the crisis," he said.

At present, Unicef in cooperation with experts from the National Institute of Sciences (LIPI), local universities and government agencies are conducting a thorough study on the impacts of the economic crisis on the country's social, economic and political activities.

Woodhouse said the results of this study would be used as a guideline to impose long-term measures.

The Indonesian government, he said, had set up excellent programs to boost people's welfare, such as poverty alleviation programs, integrated health and education services.

"Good programs, however, will not work properly without strong commitment," he said.

Citing an example, he said the government's supplementary food program for elementary school children in the country's 27 provinces had not run smoothly.

"The program has been implemented successfully only in some provinces. In other places, this kind of program is not so satisfactorily done due to a lack of commitment and supervision from related government officials," he said.

Woodhouse said that in implementing any community-based program, the Indonesian government should widely involve people from non-governmental organizations, religious institutions such as mosques, Islamic boarding houses, churches and others, as well as local organizations.

"The government cannot work alone. It has to empower the whole members of the society to take the country out of the crisis," Woodhouse said.