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.