House slams ministry over slow development

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

House of Representatives's Commission VII on population and welfare criticized the Ministry of Health on Friday for being too slow in carrying out health development programs over the last five months.

Wasna Prayitno, a member of the commission, said the ministry should have disbursed almost 50 percent of its budget to cope with health development programs as health was a crucial problem, especially in rural and remote areas.

"The ministry's sluggishness will hamper public access to health facilities and affect the government's image. The nation's majority, especially those living in rural and remote areas did not have access to adequate health facilities because of their poor economic situation," Wasna said in a hearing with Minister of Health Achmad Suyudi here last Friday.

The minister said in the meeting that his ministry had only disbursed five percent of its budget worth Rp 3.53 trillion allocated for public health facilities in the 2002 state budget, because many provinces and regencies have yet to lodge their own proposals.

Data from the Ministry of Health shows that only 81 percent of the ministry's 2001 budget has been utilized.

Wasna said the health development budget is badly needed by approximately 40 million poor people, of which around 13.4 million are suffering from tuberculosis, malaria, respiratory problems, diarrhea, filariasis, shistosomiasis, taeniasis, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS.

Improving sanitation, nutrition, providing affordable drugs, vaccines for the poor, educating and training health officials, and financing the social safety net program (JPS) and disaster recovery program are all urgently needed.

Sujudi said that some technical problems had impeded the ability of provinces to complete their project proposal forms such as feasibility studies, the use of new software programs and problems resulting from the implementation of regional autonomy.

He said that with those obstacles, only Central Kalimantan, Central Sulawesi, and North Sulawesi had been able to submit their proposals in the first quarter of this year.

"Other regional administrations, including Jakarta, only submitted their proposals in April and May," Sujudi said.

He said that the ministry has made an inventory with a total of 133 development projects to be carried out this fiscal year, but so far, only 93 have lodged proposals, and assessments of the projects would take a long time before gaining his ministry's approval.

"We realize that progress is too slow. To accelerate the budget's utilization, starting next month we will visit each province once every three months and install phone hotlines for project consultations," Sujudi added.