VP Ma’ruf Amin Leads Meeting on Extreme Poverty Eradication in E. Nusa Tenggara Province

VP Ma’ruf Amin

Vice President Ma’ruf Amin led a coordination meeting to discuss measures against extreme poverty in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province, Sunday (17/10), in the provincial capital of Kupang.

This meeting was organized at the end point of a series of working visits by the Vice President to seven priority provinces of tackling extreme poverty this year.

“This meeting is also a part of my working visit to the seven priority provinces in 2021, which started last month in Bandung (West Java province), Surabaya (East Java province), Semarang (Central Java province), Ambon (Maluku province), Manokwari (West Papua province), and Jayapura (Papua province),” said the Vice President.

This series of working visits, he continued, was aimed to accelerate the handling of extreme poverty as the Government targets zero poverty in Indonesia by the end of 2024.

“President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has set a target to eliminate extreme poverty by the end of 2024,” said the Vice President.

In East Nusa Tenggara province alone, the Government this year will focus on tackling extreme poverty in five priority regencies, namely East Manggarai, East Sumba, Central Sumba, Rote Ndao, and South Timor Tengah.

He revealed that during a meeting with governors and regents from those regencies on 28 September, he received a very comprehensive explanation from the Governor of East Nusa Tenggara Viktor Laiskodat regarding the programs initiated by the Provincial Government.

“I listened to various programs to increase the production sector from them, especially the agricultural and fishery sectors, as well as programs in the education and health sectors which are very supportive in reducing poverty,” he said.

Ma’ruf underscored that the problem is not the budget, but rather the challenge to make those programs right on target.

“Our biggest challenge is how to ensure that all of these programs, both the Central Government, provincial government, and district government programs can be accepted by extreme poor households in the five priority district areas,” he said.

The next challenge, he added, is the limited time as only three months remain to meet the target of alleviating extreme poverty in 2021. Therefore, Ma’ruf said that these efforts cannot be carried out solely by relying on regular social protection and empowerment programs.

“For this reason, as for the remaining three months of 2021, we will add special efforts using existing programs, namely the Basic Food Program and Village Direct Cash Assistance,” he said.

The assistance programs, said the Vice President, are in accordance with the Integrated Data on Social Welfare (DTKS) managed by Ministry of Social Affairs, as well as a list of names used by Ministry of Villages, Development of Disadvantaged Regions, and Transmigration to channel the Village Direct Cash Assistance.

Also on that occasion, regarding issue of incomplete data on extreme poor households, the Vice President ordered to continue to improve the data in the province.

“I order that data improvements continue to be made so that for the implementation of programs from 2022 to 2024, we can use more up-to-date and accurate data on extreme poor households,” he remarked. (Vice Presidential Secterariat/UN) (EST/MUR)