Transmigrants help speed up development
Transmigrants help speed up development
JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto said yesterday that sparsely populated provinces in Indonesia need more settlers from Java to speed up development.
The transmigration program aims to improve the living conditions of poor people in Java and accelerate economic growth of outer provinces, he said.
An obvious benefit from the state-sponsored program is that people from different provinces with different cultural backgrounds can learn from each other, Soeharto told participants of a Ministry of Transmigration national workshop.
"Transmigrants and indigenous people should live in harmony and work together to improve their living standard and overcome their common problems," he said.
About 60 percent of Indonesia's 200 million population live in Java, which constitutes only 7 percent of the country's territory.
Kalimantan, four times bigger than Java, has only 10 million people, the President said.
Kalimantan, where the government is developing one million hectares of peat moss land into agricultural fields, has been designated as a major transmigration destination.
Java, Bali, Madura and Nusa Tenggara are the main areas that supply resettlers to thinly populated islands, such as Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Irian Jaya.
The President said in the last 28 years the government has built 3,000 transmigration resettlement sites which accommodate 7.5 million people.
The transmigration program has come into the spotlight since thousands of transmigrants from Madura island, East Java, were engaged in a series of bloody clashes with indigenous Dayaks earlier this year. Hundreds of people were believed to have been killed and thousands of houses set on fire.
Critics say that although the transmigration program has brought about economic development, it threatens the indigenous culture and has sparked social envy.
Emmy Hafild, chief of the Indonesian Forum for Environment (WALHI), said the transmigration program was forceful, bringing with it culture shock for locals, especially Irianese.
"For the time being, we need to stop the program. If it continues, Irianese who cannot compete with the outsiders will always be left behind," said Emmy earlier this year.
In the current sixth Five Year Development Program that will end in 1999, the government plans to resettle 600,000 families, mostly from Java and build 1,200 new resettlement sites, mainly in eastern Indonesia.
The government hopes to resettle 80,000 families in the 1997/1998 fiscal year alone. (06)