The transmigration program has played a significant role in Indonesia’s national development, particularly in promoting a more balanced population distribution and optimizing the use of underdeveloped regions. However, many transmigration areas continue to face challenges in achieving economic growth and still struggle with various issues, including social conflicts and obstacles to community welfare.
The transmigration area in Muting District, Merauke Regency, South Papua Province, is one of Indonesia’s nationally strategic transmigration zones and plays a vital role in developing the eastern border region. The area covers approximately 78,200 hectares and encompasses several settlement units and villages spread across three districts.
Based on technical data, the area of Other Use Areas (APL) is approximately 59,110 hectares, while the Convertible Production Forest (HPK) covers around 9,307 hectares, bringing the total working area of the transmigration zone to nearly 68,417 hectares, consistent with official national data.
To achieve the desired level of community welfare, the Patriot Expedition Team of Universitas Gadjah Mada (TEP UGM) Output 1 conducted a series of studies in the Merauke area.
Several key findings from these studies were presented during a recent Focus Group Discussion (FGD) held in the Muting and Ulilin Districts of Merauke Regency. The FGD featured Dr. Doddy Aditya Iskandar, a regional development expert and lecturer at UGM, as a resource person.
In the FGD, which carried the theme “Formulating Recommendations for Evaluating the Muting Transmigration Area, Merauke Regency, South Papua Province,” Dr. Iskandar stated that strengthening sustainable development in the Muting area requires several strategic steps.
These steps include reinforcing social dialogue and local institutions between transmigrants and Indigenous communities as a foundation for sociocultural integration, as well as establishing schemes to recognize and protect customary land rights through collaborative approaches so that transmigration land and customary land can be used equitably.
To enable communities to achieve a decent standard of living, he emphasized empowering Indigenous communities through agricultural technology transfer, strengthening village cooperatives, and providing equal access to capital. In addition, developing connectivity infrastructure is essential to expand markets and accelerate the flow of goods and production outputs.
According to Dr. Iskandar, adapting transmigration programs to Papuan local wisdom deserves serious attention, particularly in housing design, cropping patterns, and natural resource management.
“Downstream processing and the development of local supply chains must become development targets so that this area does not merely serve as a center of raw production, but also as an economic base for local communities,” he said on Thursday (Dec. 18).
The TEP UGM Output 1 team working in the Muting transmigration area, Merauke Regency, South Papua Province, consists of Jan Prabowo Harmanto (team leader), Dwi Okti Bastiani, Wahyu Fitri Yulianto, Dika Kurniawan, and Harits Nuraga Padika. The team also collaborates with TEP UGM Output 2 and Output 4.
Jan Prabowo Harmanto explained that TEP UGM Output 1 carried out activities in the Muting transmigration area to evaluate local conditions and to explore community perspectives, experiences, and aspirations in order to formulate joint solutions for sustainable and inclusive transmigration area development.
One key finding highlighted the strong community aspiration for establishing higher education or vocational schools in Muting. The presence of vocational colleges or skills-based schools, he noted, would help drive efforts to strengthen local human resource capacity, particularly among young people.
“With access to further education in their own region, communities hope to acquire skills relevant to local potential, such as modern agriculture, livestock farming, product processing, and entrepreneurship. This is crucial for strengthening the self-reliance of the Muting community and accelerating the transformation of the transmigration area into a new center of economic growth,” Harmanto said.
According to Harmanto, limited infrastructure remains a major obstacle to community mobility and local economic activity. Damaged or undeveloped inter-village roads, along with limited transportation access between districts, are seen as hindering the smooth distribution of agricultural products and the delivery of public services.
“We clearly understand the community’s aspirations. They have explicitly expressed their hope that the government will prioritize improving connectivity infrastructure to support broader economic and social activities,” he explained.
In addition to basic infrastructure, the team also identified limitations in facilities that support production activities, including post-harvest equipment, agricultural storage facilities, and transportation to market centers. The lack of these facilities is seen as hindering community efforts to develop sustainable, productive economic activities.
At the same time, communities also emphasized the importance of improving basic services, particularly access to adequate health care and education facilities. In fact, many villages still lack proper health care facilities.
The activities of the TEP UGM team continued until early December 2025. During this period, four team members stayed on site to conduct field identification and observations and to collect secondary data from relevant agencies, which were later used to prepare analyses and recommendations.
It is hoped that the results of these activities will provide valuable input for the Ministry of Transmigration and other related ministries in designing necessary programs.
Author: Agung Nugroho
Post-editor: Rajendra Arya