Harmony with natives key to successful transmigration program

JAKARTA (JP): A demographer has urged the government to promote efforts to create harmonious relations between the natives and the new settlers in the transmigration sites to avoid social conflicts.

Usman Pelly told a seminar on population yesterday that social problems which occurred in several settlement areas were mainly caused by negligence regarding the interests of the local people.

"There should be an assurance that the transmigrants are not the competitors, but the complements to the natives' socio- economic life," he said.

Usman felt that the conflicts in Aceh, in which the locals evicted the settlers from the transmigration sites because of the social gap they created, and Irian Jaya, where locals stole the settlers' cattle because they thought they were wasting the land, were examples of such negligence.

Usman said that the government, which organized the transmigration programs, should pay closer attention to the interests of the locals to promote harmonious life in the settlement areas.

Even though the locals have received compensation for the land appropriated by the government for the sites, it does not mean they might end up living as people whose rights are neglected, he added.

The local people, he said, know that the finances paid to the new settlers are taken from the government's budget or taxpayers' money. He said that this social and financial disparity only serves to anger the locals.

"It is not unusual that small mistakes made by officials in charge of transmigration trigger open conflicts with the locals," he said.

Usman was one of the speakers at the two-day seminar taking the theme of "Developing the Pioneering Culture in People's Mobility" which ended yesterday.

Among the speakers were noted demographer Masri Singarimbun and anthropologists Yulfita Raharjo and Riga Adiwoso Suprapto.

The seminar, jointly organized by the Ministry of Transmigration and a number of non-governmental organizations, is part of the government's effort to invigorate the transmigration program.

Usman said that the construction of public facilities such as markets, shops and mosques, to be used together with the locals, help avoid the creation of enclaves which might trigger ethnic problems.

According to Usman, locals have, in the past, created the term "Javanese colonialism" to refer to the settlers in Irian Jaya because of such enclaves.

Singarimbun said that he could not accept the assumption that the Javanese people had very low mobility because of the tight relationships with their homeland.

He based his arguments on the fact that Central and East Java and Yogyakarta, from which the Javanese people originated, had lower population growth compared to the areas such as East Kalimantan, Riau and Bengkulu in Sumatra which served as the migration areas for the Javanese.

"Migration is obviously an important factor in this matter," he said. "I believe that the Javanese people are responsive to new opportunities," he said. (par)