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)