Poor welfare blamed on small budget

Poor welfare blamed on small budget

Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The small budgetary allocation for health, education and
social welfare expenditure was a major factor that rendered
Indonesia one of the countries least successful in improving the
welfare of its people, population experts said on Thursday.

Chairman of the Indonesian Legislative Forum on Population and
Development Surya Chandra Surapaty said social spending had yet
to enter the mainstream in the budget at either national or
provincial level.

"Meanwhile, the education sector should receive 20 percent of
the development budget and the health sector some 15 percent. At
present we receive only 5 percent for each," he told The Jakarta
Post.

In the 2002 Human Development Report released by the UN
Development Program (UNDP) on Wednesday, Indonesia ranked 110th
out of 173 countries when assessed on its Human Development Index
(HDI), which measures each country's achievement in terms of life
expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income.

The report puts Indonesia at seventh of the 10 members of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), just above
Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

The country's rank is the same as it achieved in 1995.

Separately, Ascobat Gani, an advocate on family planning and
human development, said Indonesia's HDI ranking had nothing to do
with the "more democratic" label attached to the nation in the
UNDP report.

"Logically the more democratic a country the more prosperous
it is. But the question remains. Is Indonesia really democratic?"
he asked the Post.

Ascobat, who also heads the Study Center of Health and Economy
at the University of Indonesia, said each government institution
should spend more of its budget on the social sector instead of
buying cars for its officials, building new offices, or on
overseas travel.

Ascobat cited that the province of Papua had shown good
political will by allocating 30 percent of its annual budget to
the education sector and 15 percent to health.

He emphasized that the increase in the budget for social
spending would help the country boost the people's welfare.

"With enough expenditure we can hope for a significant decline
in the maternal mortality rate, which currently stands at 360
deaths per 100,000 live births," Ascobat said.

He expressed hope that the increase could also eliminate the
number of dropout students. There are 1.7 million school dropouts
each year in the country, some 53 percent of whom end up as job
seekers.