Private sector to have bigger role in resettlement

JAKARTA (JP): The government is drafting a bill that provides better legal protection to resettlers and gives the private sector a role in the state-sponsored transmigration program.

The Ministry of Transmigration's Secretary-General Ign. Hardoyo said yesterday the state secretariat is reviewing the bill before it submits the draft law to the House of Representatives.

Hardoyo said the draft law, which is a revision of the 1972 law on resettlement, guarantees that among others, all self- sponsored resettlers will have the land promised by the government as long as they follow official procedures.

"The bill benefits both government-sponsored and self- sponsored resettlers," Hardoyo told The Jakarta Post after a hearing with House Commission V for transmigration.

Head of the ministry's legal and public relation bureau Prapto Hadi said that the bill guarantees all resettlers will receive ownership certificates for their land.

"In future, resettlers should no longer have a hard time tending to their certificates. They should report any problem to the government," he said.

The resettlement program is often criticized because of glitches in its implementation. There have been reports of settlers in remote areas not being provided with proper housing and facilities.

"It needs 10 years to develop a new resettlement area. We can't expect to see a result within days," Prapto said.

Hardoyo said that the bill provides more opportunities for private investors to invest in resettlement projects.

"Formerly, people considered the government had a monopoly on the resettlement program. The bill explicitly encourages all people, including private investors, to invest in resettlement sites," Hardoyo said.

Prapto added that the private sector will benefit from investing in resettlement areas because the government has already prepared infrastructure, schools, markets and other facilities.

In addition, he said, investors will not have difficulty finding workers in locations. "The government also offers facilities, such as low-interest loans," Prapto said.

The ministry is responsible for carrying out the government's ambitious program of resettling as many people as possible from overcrowded Java and Bali to other islands in the Indonesian archipelago. About two-thirds of Indonesia's 195 million people live on Java and nearby Madura and Bali.

The government has been campaigning for people -- landless people, the unemployed and the poor, to move to the eastern provinces, where land is more plentiful than in Sumatra.

So far, 140,722 families have been resettled over the past two years. The government has built 277 resettlement sites with 128,469 houses on 300,000 hectares of land.

By the end of the current Sixth Five-Year Development Plan period in 1999, the government will have established 1,200 resettlement sites on some 900,000 hectares of land. It will also have constructed 350,000 houses with clean water and public facilities to accommodate resettlers. (31)