Resettlement target can't be achieved

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Only 76 percent of a total 650,000 families targeted can be transmigrated before the end of the sixth five- year development plan, Minister of Transmigration Siswono Yudohusodo said here yesterday.

He expects only 500,000 families will be transmigrated by the end of the development plan period in March.

"The cause is mainly due to financial problems," the minister said without elaborating further.

Speaking in front of cadres of the province's Transmigration Service Post (Posyantrans), Siswono maintained that despite the many criticisms made against the program, transmigration remains an important element in helping fight poverty.

"Distributing people throughout the country is a very urgent need at the moment, not only for transmigrants but also for local people so they can increase their wealth.

"Transmigrants can teach indigenous people how to cultivate rice fields, raise poultry and breed cattle in a better way," he said.

Siswono pointed out that it was even more urgent to send transmigrants to areas where there was a lack of manpower.

"Apart from that, there's still, of course, the traditional reason that Java island is overpopulated," said Siswono pointing out that Java, which makes up less than 7 percent of the country's land area, is home to 59 percent of Indonesia's 200 million people.

Minister Siswono admitted that there were still many misperceptions about the transmigration program.

"Americans, for example, call the transmigration program to East Timor a second invasion of the province while in Irian Jaya it is wrongly perceived as destroying the society. Europeans say the transmigration program in Kalimantan is only destroying the tropical forests," he remarked.

When asked about those who say the program was nothing more than "Javanization" or "Islamization" of other cultures, Siswono said that it was completely untrue.

Every transmigration site, he said, involved the local community. He added that the percentage of migrants at transmigration sites account for at least 20 percent of the population.

In East Timor, for example, the government had decided that the number of migrants in the transmigration area should not exceed 20 percent of the population, Siswono explained.

"We also build churches as well as mosques," he added of the transmigrants' activities. (swa)