As a way to accelerate welfare development in the border areas of Papua Province, the District of Bintang Mountains endured an audience and planned collaboration with Universitas Gadjah Mada. Through the cooperation from two parties in the implementation of Higher Education Tridharma, it can hopefully improve the quality of human resources by expanding and enhancing the implementation of education and health services, also empowering the community’s economy.
UGM Chancellor, Prof. Ir. Panut Mulyono, M.Eng., D.Eng., IPU, ASEAN Eng and the elected Regent of Bintang Mountains Regency 2020 – 2025, Spey Yan Bidana, ST., M.Si have officially signed the cooperation document at the UGM Hall on Tuesday (5/1).
Spey Yan Bidana, ST., M.Si, as the elected Regent of the Bintang Mountains Regency 2020-2025, said that Bintang Regency is one of the country’s borders and considered a disadvantaged area. Hence, he hopes for UGM and its alumni’s support for this continuity of educational activities and expediting Papua’s development through Bintang Regency.
“We focus on developing human resources for people who can finish their education from S1 to S3. As for our village located on the country’s border, we can hopefully establish the university designed. We will encourage the establishment of a university at the country’s border to prepare its human resources. Hopefully, UGM is willing to become the foster father for that university,” he said.
Additionally, Spey Yan Bidana also revealed that in order to achieve success, development is managed through the agribusiness center development in the border region of Papua in the Bintang Mountains Regency. For instance, compiling the grand design of an agribusiness center in Bintang Mountains Regency and compiling in detail the Community-Based Agribusiness Area.
Several plans are considered potential, one of which is a livestock-based business and several mountainous districts that have the potential for the development of Arabica coffee and in the east of agribusiness development of vanilla. Accordingly, the Government of Bintang Regency considerably hopes that UGM can help them prepare technical planning documents and budget preparation.
“We highly hope for UGM support in preparing the RPJM budget because the most utmost basic problems confronted by Bintang Regency’s people are education, health and the people’s economy which must be supported by infrastructure,” Spey Yan Bidana explained.
UGM Chancellor also conveyed similar things: Prof. Ir. Panut Mulyono, M.Eng., D.Eng., IPU, and ASEAN Eng. According to him, hopefully, throughout this audience and cooperation, it will be able to quicken the Bintang Mountains development. The most important thing to improve the area focuses on human resource capabilities development.
“As we heard earlier, the elected Regent has conveyed his desire to build a university on the border’s area. This plan is considered a great goal because we plan development to this border area so that we can be precautionary to prevent our border areas getting worse than our neighbors,” he said.
According to the Chancellor, it is dangerous if the neighboring countries provide much better off facilities than our border areas. This condition is because citizens on the border areas might enjoy neighboring countries’ facilities instead of ours. Among them are various television and radio broadcasts, especially if there is a condition where roads in neighboring countries are much better than our border areas. It will definitely cause a bad impact.
Accordingly, said the Chancellor, development in the border areas is the important point that can make Indonesia more advanced in developing border areas than other neighboring countries. Even though this is challenging, it is still necessary to do because Indonesia’s border areas are quite rich.
Accordingly, UGM welcomes cooperation to improve human resources in Bintang Regency to study at UGM, both for undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral degrees. UGM opens wide opportunities for the best sons and daughters of the Bintang Mountains Regency who can study at UGM.
“Meanwhile, regarding the tactical process of development, such as how UGM helps regional planning and financial planning and so on. Regarding this, UGM has experts who can assist with that. At UGM itself, there is a Papua Task Force managed by Bambang Purwoko, who serves to help the Papua region. I guess there are multiple things we can do as concern on how we develop the border areas because it is very important for the welfare and presence of the Republic of Indonesia, “he said.
Author: Agung Nugroho
Photo: Firsto
Translator: Natasa A