Harmony with natives key to successful transmigration program
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)