Fight against poverty focuses on women

from The Jakarta Post

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A new attitude toward the fight against poverty has seen three cities encourage public participation in policy-making and design budgets that embrace women and the underprivileged.

In the resource-rich cities of Banda Aceh in Aceh province, Balikpapan in East Kalimantan, and Kupang in East Nusa Tenggara province, officials have created budgets and programs more in line with their individual socio-economic conditions.

Kupang has encouraged a greater cross-section of its population to become a part of its city council, to help work toward new public policy and development programs, said the city's mayor.

"Kupang has had a 33-member city council representing all stakeholders with its main task to give input to what the city administration has to do," Kupang mayor Daniel Adoe said during a seminar on fiscal decentralization here Thursday.

"They also play a role in proposing the city's planning and supervision of planning to ensure the development reaches its goals."

Daniel said the city's development was partially based on feedback from the city council, which now represented the poor, nongovernmental and religious organizations.

"Under such an approach, the city and its programs has won the hearts of residents," Daniel said.

Banda Aceh vice mayor Illiza Sa'aduddin Djamal said despite the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, the city had seen the importance of empowering women and had moved to include them in business and politics.

She said, "Acehnese women have participated in making, planning, supervising and implementing the city's development programs".

Hundreds of women in the city were now involved in property, construction, handicraft and food businesses.

Illiza said a proposed increase from 0.11 percent in 2007 to 5.8 percent in 2008 for the empowerment of women would help ensure Banda Aceh became a more female-friendly city.

She said organizations representing women had been given stronger opportunities to fill political positions in legislative and executive bodies at local and national levels under the general election law and 2005 Aceh administration law.

Balikpapan Mayor Imdaad Hamid said his city had issued a bylaw to help eradicate poverty and had allocated 2.5 percent of the 2008 budget to implement the ruling.

"This fiscal year, we have funds worth Rp 26.6 billion, including Rp 3.9 billion from the central government to carry out anti-poverty programs, including scholarships, healthcare insurance, free school fees, credit schemes for poor families, and free public services, such as birth certificates and identity cards," he said.

Coordinator of the Forum for NGO Information and Communications in South Sulawesi M. Khudri Arsyad told the seminar about a program aimed to empower scavengers living in Makassar's waste sites.

He said the program was initiated by NGOs and encouraged scavengers to meet public officials and learn more about their right to access public services.

"Some 10,000 scavengers do not know about the government's programs for the poor, including healthcare insurance or cheap rice," he said.