Resettlement target can't be achieved

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)