Redress gaps between regions, Soeharto says

Redress gaps between regions, Soeharto says

JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto yesterday called for greater
efforts to bridge the gap of development between regions.

Opening the national meeting of the Ministry of
Transmigration, Soeharto said that the eastern part of Indonesia
developmentally lags behind the western regions, and that
resettlement programs can help redress the situation.

"We must keep on trying so that development in eastern
Indonesia can be accelerated, so that the existing gaps with
other areas can be reduced and even eliminated in the future," he
told some 255 participating officials and experts.

The government has recently decided to establish integrated
economic development centers in 13 provinces in eastern Indonesia
to help bridge the development gap between western and eastern
provinces. Experts have pointed out that the gap is caused by,
among other things, the eastern regions' smaller population and
lack of infrastructure.

The government plans to accomplish this by speeding up the
development process and attracting private investors through the
centers. It has also prepared three drafts of rulings to be
adopted as Presidential decrees, which will be used as a legal
basis for the establishment of the development centers.

"Eastern Indonesia has great potential to grow rapidly, so
that it can produce development centers ... they should also be
the motor that helps propel development in the surrounding
areas," Soeharto said.

Yesterday, in his report to the President, Minister of
Transmigration Siswono Yudohusodo said his office plans to
resettle a total of 600,000 families to sparsely populated
eastern Indonesia from densely populated and disaster-prone areas
in Java, Bali and Madura during the current sixth five-year
development plan period.

By the end of the plan's period in 1999, the government will
have established 1,200 resettlement sites on some 900,000
hectares of land. It will have also constructed 350,000 houses
with clean water and public facilities to accommodate the
resettlers.

Of the total resettlers, 350,000 families are government-
sponsored, while the rest go on their own initiative, he said.
Most of the resettlers are from East Java and chose South
Sumatra, Riau and Central Sulawesi as their destinations.

So far, a total of 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, he said.

Soeharto reminded the meeting that the background of
prospective resettlers should be matched with the characteristic
of the targeted areas and the pattern of the resettlement
programs.

The ceremony was also attended by Minister of Forestry
Djamaluddin Soeryohadikoesoemo, Minister of Cooperatives Subiakto
Tjakrawerdaja and Minister of Agrarian Affairs Soni Harsono.

Soeharto also called for special attention to be given to
forest squatters, who are mostly poor farmers. "Improve the
welfare of forest squatters and nomadic farmers ... so they won't
destroy the forest they live in," he said. (swe)