Govt urged to review poverty policy paper

A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Several non-governmental organizations (NGO) grouped under the Indonesian Antipoverty Movement (Gapri) demanded on Thursday that the government invite wider public participation in producing the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).

"If the government does not review the PRSP, we will quit the government-sanctioned team which has been working to draw up the paper," Gapri coordinator Muchtar Abas said.

Muchtar said the PRSP, which has been worked on since March last year as part of the post-International Monetary Fund (IMF) program, had denied the public, especially the poor the opportunity to participate in its drafting.

He said government officials had refused to invite wider public participation, saying that it would only slow the drafting. Indonesia has to implement the paper through a presidential decree in May at the latest.

"We don't want the government to misuse us to legitimize the draft. The government has failed to involve the public," he said.

Gapri consists of, among others, the Indonesian NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID), the Antipoverty Independent Commission (KIKIS), Oxfam GB and the Indonesian Network for Transparency and Accountability (JARI).

The NGOs have asked the government to heed their Participatory Poverty Assessment proposal, which is aimed at boosting public participation and understanding the needs of the poor across the country.

The government estimates the number of people living below the poverty line at 30 million but NGO data reveals that there are at least 100 million people classified as poor based on the World Bank's criteria. The bank classifies the poor as those who earn US$2 or less per day.

Binny Buchori from INFID agreed with Muchtar, saying the PRSP was a carbon copy of the old scheme introduced by the previous government, which discouraged public participation and had proven to be a failure.

"The current PRSP is doomed to fail also because the government still views the poor as an object," Binny said.

She said some NGOs activists had been invited to join the government team working on the paper, but were not permitted to criticize the draft.

The team is dominated by government officials from the Ministry of People's Welfare and the Office of the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Binny said.

Apart from its lack of public participation, Binny said the PRSP was not transparent as it did not reveal its donors.

"It's still unclear who is the donor and how much money is involved. Financial support for the team is also unclear," she said.

In 2002, the government allocated a total of Rp 2.96 trillion for poverty eradication programs, which were managed by 10 ministries and other government institutions.

The government disbursed an additional Rp 4.4 trillion for the poor in all provinces affected by fuel price hikes last year. But according to a recent survey conducted by researchers from several universities, most of the funds did not reach the poor.