Poverty and moral deprivation in N. Sumatra continues to rise

Poverty and moral deprivation in N. Sumatra continues to rise Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Medan
The North Sumatra provincial administration has seen the number of people living below the poverty line in the province increase progressively from 14.93 percent in 2004 to 15.66 percent in 2006, out of a total population of 12.6 million, an official said Monday.
North Sumatra provincial secretary Muchyan Tambusa said the increase was due to the limited job opportunities, thus pushing up the unemployment rate.
Based on the District Funding Allocation (DEA) data proposal, the highest number of poor people in the province was found in South Nias regency, accounting for 32.42 percent of its people, followed by Nias regency with 32.17 percent, Central Tapanuli with 31.36 percent and North Tapanuli with 24.79 percent.
"To alleviate poverty in the province, the provincial administration has established a poverty mitigation team through a gubernatorial decree, in order that every working unit carries out its tasks to empower the poor," said Muchyan in his keynote address at a seminar themed The Role of Society in Mitigating Poverty in North Sumatra.
Secretary of the North Sumatra Development Planning Board, Salman, said his office was making efforts to alleviate poverty by revitalizing micro, small and medium scale cooperatives by directly involving the people, creating job opportunities, improving competitiveness and broadening business opportunities, as a medium term development program from 2006 to 2009.
Salman said the provincial administration was optimistic that the poverty rate would drop to 8.2 percent by the end of the program in 2009.
North Sumatra coordinator of Transparency International Indonesia, Jaya Arjuna, expressed doubts that the province's poverty rate would drop to below 10 percent in the next five years. He cited that the poor could be classified into four groups; inherited, systemized, conditional and self-imposed (temporary and permanent) poverty.
"It would be very hard for them to recover from poverty, especially those grouped in the self-imposed category, because the root of the problem is that they're morally deprived," said Jaya, who is a lecturer at North Sumatra University's School of Engineering.
Jaya said alleviating poverty was an uphill task, and that the right paradigm and commitment, such as on honesty and orderliness were essential, without which it would be the same as commercializing poverty itself.
"I have data on the number of people who claim they are poor just to obtain cash assistance from the government. Most of them own cell phones and motorcycles. This is the so-called self-imposed poverty group and the source of deprivation is actually corruption," said Jaya.