Give concrete assistance to farmers and fishermen
Give concrete assistance to farmers and fishermen
When addressing a ceremony marking the awarding of the 2001
Food Resilience Citation in Jakarta last Friday, President
Megawati Soekarnoputri instructed her ministers, particularly the
agricultural and marine and fishery ministers, and other related
officials to immediately solve basic problems faced by farmers,
fishpond owners, cattle breeders and fishermen.
The instruction is noble, as farmers and fishermen have always
been marginalized in the country's development. Farmers have even
been victimized by a national food policy that is weighted in
favor of urban interests.
To be effective, this instruction must also form part of the
government's attitude. It must be everybody's obligation to
translate the instruction into reality and Megawati herself must
personally monitor its implementation.
Unfortunately, an instruction alone plus sympathy for the
unfavorable fate of farmers and fishermen alone will not be
sufficient for any improvement in the lot of farmers and
fishermen. There are some other necessary conditions to meet.
First of all, Megawati must have a clear vision about how to
empower farmers and fishermen. This empowerment effort must then
be included in the main agenda of our national economic
development. In this respect, Megawati should have, first of all,
instructed her coordinating minister for the economy to formulate
a national economic development framework in which the
empowerment of farmers and fishermen would take a central
position without, of course, ignoring economic development
efforts based on the global market.
Then, of no less importance will be the finalization of
regional autonomy arrangements, because in improving the lot of
farmers and fishermen it is the regencies that must play the
biggest role. The ideal scenario would be for the regencies to
know exactly what they must do in this respect and the central
government, in this case the technically relevant ministries,
would focus themselves better on improving the capacity of
regencies to the level necessary for the implementation of their
jobs.
It would be a good idea, in this holy month of Ramadhan, for
Megawati and her economic team to sit down together to discuss
thoroughly the strategy of how to empower farmers and fishermen.
-- Republika, Jakarta