Govt warns of population explosion

Sari P. Setiogi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A Cabinet minister warned that the family planning program had to be maintained in order to avoid a population explosion that would overwhelm the country's resources.

If the population grows unchecked, Indonesia would have over 400 million people by 2050, Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf Kalla said during a population seminar on Thursday.

This, according to Kalla, would pose a serious threat to the country's educational system and health services.

According to the minister, Indonesia's population is currently growing by 1.49 percent a year, down from 1.97 percent annually from 1980 through 1990.

"Without the continuous implementation of family planning, this decrease could reverse," he said.

The secretary of the National Family Planning Coordinating Board, Lalu Sudarmadi, said family planning had lost its appeal since the implementation of regional autonomy in 2001.

"The policy (family planning) now varies in every local administration. Some (administrations) are concerned about the issue, while others don't care," he said.

Even with the current population, the government has trouble meeting the demand for education, employment and health services.

The country's maternal mortality rate is 334 deaths per 100,000 live births, the highest among Asian countries.

And the infant mortality rate is also considered high, at 43 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the Central Statistics Agency.

Kalla said that in 2000, about 66 percent of people over the age of 10 were elementary school graduates, while only about 1.7 percent of people had completed undergraduate studies.

In 2002, 9.1 million people were unemployed, an increase from 5.8 million in 2000. Among the unemployed were an estimated 2.1 million first-timer job seekers.

Without appropriate education and employment opportunities, the population will be trapped in poverty, leading to more complicated social issue such as crime, the minister said.

The number of families in Indonesia officially classified as poor was 27.2 million at the end 1990, but soared to 49.5 million in 1998 following the economic crisis.