RI to host international seminar on transmigration

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia will host an international seminar on migration next month, inviting 94 participants from 13 countries to share their experiences in transmigration programs.

Kulup Bono, spokesman of the Ministry of Transmigration, said yesterday that the three-day seminar, to be opened by President Soeharto on Nov. 27, will discuss ways to promote development through population distribution.

The gathering is also be expected to come up with ideas to help Indonesia and the other participants fight the negative image of transmigration programs.

"The transmigration program has been in existence for almost 50 years ... It has been accused of, among other things, causing environmental destruction (and) of being a means of enlarging territory," Bono said. "The seminar will respond to those accusations."

The participants -- officials, academics and non-governmental organizations -- will be from Indonesia as well as from Brazil, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Namibia, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.

Participating as observers will be representatives from Brunei Darussalam, Japan, India, China, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia.

Indonesia has been foremost in organizing transmigration programs to move people from the densely-populated islands of Java, Bali and Madura to the less-populated outer islands of the archipelago.

Some 50,000 families are relocated each year under the program.

Officials have said that the transmigration program is aimed, not only at alleviating demographic pressures in Java, Bali and Madura, but also at promoting the development of the areas to which the settlers are moved.

Java accounts for about seven percent of the land surface of Indonesia but is home to more than 60 percent of Indonesia's 194 million people. (swe)