Govt to install phone lines in rural areas for vote-counting
Govt to install phone lines in rural areas for vote-counting
Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government is planning to install telephone lines in 43,022
villages outside Java within the next three years in a bid to
improve telecommunications in the world's largest archipelagic
nation.
State Minister for Communications and Information Syamsul
Mu'arif said on Monday that the government had decided to install
telephone lines in 7,500 remote villages in Sumatra, Kalimantan
and the eastern part of Indonesia this year.
"Establishing telephone lines in these villages will speed up
counting ballots in the 2004 elections," Syamsul said after a
cabinet meeting.
Indonesia is expected to hold elections between May and August
next year to elect its president and vice president, as well as
legislature.
"Aside from this, the government has a duty to provide
telecommunications services for people across the country," he
said.
Minister of Transportation Agum Gumelar, meanwhile, said that
the government had allocated Rp 90 billion (US$10.2million) for
the construction of fixed telephone lines in 2003 alone.
"The funding will be taken from the state and regional
budgets. In 2004, we will reach another 17,000 villages, and the
rest in 2005," said Agum.
The announcement came after the government, bowing to public
pressure, canceled the telephone tariff increase designed to help
state-owned telecommunications company PT Telekomunikasi
Indonesia (Telkom) expand its business.
PT Telkom officials had threatened to freeze expansion should
the government fail to raise telephone charges.
Currently, only 3.7 percent of the country's 215 million
people have telephone lines at home, only 0.2 percent of which
are in rural areas.
Worse still, up to 70 percent of current subscribers of
telephone lines are found on the island of Java, where close to
60 percent of the country's population live. Java accounts for
one fifth of the country's land area.
Compared to neighboring countries, Indonesia lags behind in
terms of telecommunications development. In Singapore, for
example, 58 percent of its population have fixed telephone lines
at home, while this figure is 24 percent in Malaysia, and 10
percent in the Philippines.
Stressing the obligatory nature of the project, Agum said,
"This is a non-profit project, but we will be very happy if there
are phone operators who want to cooperate with us.
"To attract investors, though, we need to increase the
telephone tariff, of course," he added.
There are speculations that the government will increase
telephone rates in March after canceling a hike this month due to
strong opposition from the public.
Syamsul added that the phone lines would be followed by a
series of programs from his office and the ministry of home
affairs, such as establishing a people's information hall in
these villages.
"We will use the facilities to ensure a fair distribution of
information in the country," the minister said.