Ministry of Health to keep regency offices

Ministry of Health to keep regency offices

JAKARTA (JP): The Ministry of Health will hand over some of its tasks to the regency administrations as mandated by the regional autonomy program, but plans to retain some of its representative offices to handle the more complicated affairs.

Minister of Health Sujudi said he had no objection to giving the regions more tasks and said that some of the hospitals currently controlled by the central government would be transferred to local administrations if they were ready to manage them.

"It doesn't matter who owns the hospitals. The important thing is that health services are made available to the public," he said as reported by Antara.

On April 25, President Soeharto is scheduled to launch a pilot project to give 26 regency administrations greater responsibility under the regional autonomy program. If successful, the program will be expanded to all of the other regencies in the country.

Under the program, the representative offices of the 24 government ministries in the regencies will have to be abolished as their tasks will be taken over by the local administrations.

Sujudi, however, said he plans to retain some of the representative offices to assist in the transfer of duty, as well as to coordinate operations.

He also promised that nobody in the ministry would lose their jobs because of the restructuring under the regional autonomy program. The ministry is coordinating with the Ministry of Home Affairs in resolving problems regarding staffing.

Sujudi said that with local authorities taking more charge, some of the targets in the health sector could be achieved more rapidly. He cited reducing the post-natal mortality rate from 425 per 100,000 to 225, and the infant mortality rate from 58 per 1,000 birth to 30 as examples. (29)