Muhaimin: Empowering Communities to Prosper and Move Beyond Social Assistance

Jakarta (ANTARA) — Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment Abdul Muhaimin Iskandar is continuing to promote an empowerment strategy to improve living standards and help people move beyond social assistance.

“We will continue to promote and deliver guarantees of sustainable improvements in living standards, enabling people to move beyond social assistance. The slogan we keep emphasising is: temporary assistance, lasting empowerment,” Minister Muhaimin Iskandar said in Jakarta on Wednesday.

He said the government had three strategies for poverty reduction.

The first is to reduce people’s expenditure through social security, health insurance and employment protection; affordable education; the provision of development infrastructure; low-cost transport; and education costs that are affordable or free.

The second is to provide empowerment programmes that enable people to increase their income.

Through these strategies, his ministry is targeting poverty reduction among 22.9 million Indonesians.

“Our responsibility to the 22.9 million people living at the poverty line, or 8.07 per cent of the population, is an integral part of our development and our empowerment strategy,” Muhaimin Iskandar said.

Under President Prabowo Subianto’s administration, a new paradigm is being applied to national development: community empowerment.