National

Government Prepares Database of Poor People
Monday, 01 August, 2005 | 21:35 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta:The Indonesian government is preparing a database of poor people in order to handle poverty.

“It is in the form of a website,” said Sujana Royat, Deputy to the Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare’s for Poverty Handling during an ASEAN workshop entitled Cooperation in Handling Poverty and Millennium Development Goals in Jakarta on Monday (01/08).

According to Royat, this is important to speed up the handling of poverty in Indonesia and to make the millennium development goals become reality.

With this database, members of the general public can view the profiles of poor people in each region.

The establishment of this database, Royat said, was carried out by gathering all existing data in every government institution, including the Central Bureau of Statistics Central Agency (BPS) and the Family National Planning Coordination Board (BKKBN) as well as ministries.

“We want a system that brings together all the data into a national database that the public can access,” stated Royat.

He added that the philosophy was that in order to handle poverty, one must know who the poor people are.

In handling poverty, Royat acknowledged that many government programs have failed to reach poor people, including fuel compensation funds.

“We must know who made use of these funds because many people are entitled to them but did not receive any,” he said.

For this purpose, the government has requested several components of society to support the updating of the database.

This will include NGOs, youth organizations and Muslim schools.

“Particularly the youth,” Royat stated. (Ami Afriatni-Tempo News Room)