Jakartans prefer industrial transmigration

JAKARTA (JP): Governor Surjadi Soedirdja said that Jakartans should be trained and sent to other provinces in Indonesia as industrial transmigrants rather than asking them to join the traditional transmigration programs.

"The fact is that most Jakartans are not familiar with agriculture because they have never worked in that field before. Therefore it's better to send them as industrial transmigrants," Soedirdja said yesterday when he saw off Jakartans departing for resettlement areas in Aceh.

Surjadi said that Jakarta has signed a series of agreements with a number of provinces, including Riau, Central Sulawesi, South and Central Kalimantan. The agreement states that Jakarta will regularly send industrial transmigrants to the areas.

"We will train the would-be transmigrants before sending them to resettlement sites," Surjadi said, adding that Jakartans are working in Riau in the house appliances industry and in Central Sulawesi they are working in food the industry.

Surjadi attributed the small number of Jakartans joining the government sponsored transmigration programs to the lack of experience in agriculture.

Fifty families, or 203 people, from Jakarta left for a transmigration site in Aceh with 855 people from Central and East Java.

They will be resettled in several areas in West Aceh, such as Alue Glumpang, Krueng Tuan and Batas Puteh.

The city administration plans to send 1600 families to transmigration sites outside Java in the 1994-1995 fiscal year.

"Thus far we have already sent a total of 616 families," Surjadi said.

The head of the Jakarta Transmigration Office, Haryokusumowardhono, said that most Jakartans who join the transmigration program are poor residents who live in slum areas.

Governor Soedirja said that transmigration is a way to reduce the population in the capital city.

"Many people come to the city to find a better life but on the contrary they only pose many problems to the city."

The governor hopes that the population growth will be decreased from 2,41 percent to two percent because. "Otherwise there will be 12 million people living in Jakarta by the year 2005." (yns)