Land allocated for transmigrants

UNA AHA, Southeast Sulawesi: The Kendari administration has allocated 1,000 hectares of land in Asera, Latoma and Abuki districts toward a transmigration program.

"The land has been prepared to welcome some 500 families," Kendari vice regent Tony Herbiansysh said here on Thursday.

He said the administration had offered the land under the transmigration program on the grounds that the three districts were still scarcely populated.

The transmigration program is one of the key policies initiated during the regime of former president Soeharto.

The policy aims to lower the population density on Java and has met with resistance from regional administrations, which fear that parts of their territories would turn into Javanese colonies.

Local leaders could do nothing to stop the program while Soeharto was in power, but since his ouster in 1998, the policy has rarely been implemented. -- Antara