From 2004 to 2011, government budget increase for poverty alleviation programme was 400% but from 2004 to 2010, the rate of poverty reduced only by 3,37 percent, or 0,56 percent per year.
“It is ironic, if the same rate in poverty reduction continues to take place until year 2015, so the rate in Indonesia is still 11,08 percent. This figure is far from the MDGs target, which is 7,5 percent,” said Prof. Dr. Susetiawan, in UGM Graduate School on Wednesday (13/3).
Announcing the research evaluation of poverty allevation in 15 regencies/municipalities in the seminar run by PSSAT UGM, Susetiawan considered it necessary to review the poverty alleviation programme in Indonesia. This is because many people need to know how the poverty allevation programme can resolve poverty issues.
Susetiawan considered the programme has not given an effect on increasing the quality of life of impoverished people whilst the funds used had come from debts. “It is indeed not ethical to deal poverty with debts. Debts based funds should be used for increasing business scale which can generate profit,” he added.
In his opinion, if the 300 million Indonesian population is willing to work together, there can be no poor people. It’s because the poor people is, in fact, supported by their community.
Susetiawan saw that it’s time not to decentralise poverty handling, not only in terms of implementation but also data tracking of the poor. “It’s important for policy makers to think how to understand people’s condition, not making poverty programme a project,” he added.
Drs. Muhadi Sugiono, M.A., Head of Centre for South East Asia Social Studies, said the research on the effectivity of poverty alleviation programme had run for one year from mid-2011 up to mid-2012. The research involved 3,040 respondent in 15 regencies/municipalities which were the areas of monitoring of the SAPA (Strategic Alliance for Poverty Allevation). These include Banda Aceh city, Serdang Bedagai regency, Bandung regency, Garut, Sukabumi, Ciamis, Tasikmalaya city, Subang regency, Kebumen regency, Surakarta city, Gunung Kidul regency, Jembrana regency, Lombok Tengah regency, Kupang and Makassar cities.
The analysis, said Muhadi Sugiono, studied five key aspects: profile of poor family, implementation process of poverty alleviation programme, poverty data use, dynamics of poverty alleviation in Indonesia from 2005 – 2010 and recommendation of poverty alleviation programme in future. “The research found out that the BPS (Statistics Bureau) data on poverty profiles were not true while the category of poverty, almost poor, poor and very poor as identification tools for BPS were not effective enough in supporting poverty alleviation programme,” he explained.