Stakeholders told to fight poverty
Stakeholders told to fight poverty
P.C. Naommy, Jakarta
Lack of seriousness, coordination and integrated cooperation
among stakeholders has hindered efforts to eradicate poverty in
the country.
"The government should involve more private sector companies
and non-governmental organizations to take part in poverty
eradication efforts," said M. Rizal Ismail, deputy of the task
force responsible for extending working and entrepreneurial
opportunities.
Rizal cited the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), a
project funded by several international financial institutions,
as a source of guidelines for battling poverty in the country.
The paper was drafted to meet requirements set by the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund on 80 indebted
countries, including Indonesia, in order to obtain more loans
from the international financial institutions.
According to Rizal, the heart of the program is to involve
more people from the private sector and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) by taking their recommendations into
account.
"The program should be run by multi-stakeholders, but common
practice has shown that the government has dominated all meetings
and ignored or bypassed the opinions or suggestions from the
private sector or NGOs," said Rizal on the sidelines of a seminar
on poverty eradication held by the Indonesian Antipoverty
Movement (GAPRI) on Tuesday.
Rizal said that the government's domination had forced up to
70 percent of the private sector companies and NGOs involved to
leave the project.
Rizal further said that government domination was reflected in
the PRSP, with its technical and bureaucratic language that was
hard for most community stakeholders to understand.
He also sharply criticized the technical advisers who were
supposed to assist with the PRSP for failing to provide an
accurate portrayal of poverty in the country.
"Most of the technical advisers would only take old secondary
data and plug in old analysis in their reports, which don't
describe the actual condition of poverty in the country," said
Rizal.
Rizal said that with a salary of up to US$1,500 for two
technical advisers in each task force, they should be able to
provide primary data from the field and up-to-date analysis.
Further criticism came from Soedjarwo, the first secretary of
the task force responsible for human resources development.
Soedjarwo said that poverty eradication should come in an
integrated package, not a spatial design.
"All departments have developed their own programs, and they
don't come in an integrated package, which won't yield an overall
solution for the needy," said Soedjarwo.
According to the committee, the PRSP draft will be submitted
to the Commission of Poverty Eradication on May 28, before the
paper is taken to a Cabinet meeting in June.