RI to host international seminar on transmigration

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)