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)