Indonesia is gearing up to accelerate combat against poverty with various programs amidst challenges

Indonesia is gearing up to accelerate combat against poverty with various programs amidst challenges, both domestically and internationally.

The government is optimistic to decrease poverty rate as in the past few years, statistics record a success story.

This year's poverty alleviation target is overshadowed by rising oil price due to dynamism in the Middle East and rising food price due to extreme climate.

But the government is dare to set growth target of 6.5-6.9 percent in 2012, surpassing Malaysia (5.2 percent), Thailand (4.5 percent), the Philippines (5.0 percent) and Singapore (4.4 percent) .

In terms of poverty, Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo said that percentage of people living below poverty line has decreased from 16.6 percent in 2007 to 13.3 percent in 2010.

"In 2012, the poverty rate is expected to decrease to 10.5-11.5 percent from 11.5-12.5 percent in 2011," said Martowardojo.

However, critics claimed that the success is only on paper, saying that many people still live in and under poverty line.

Certainly, it takes a long time to reduce poverty rate in significant amount as Indonesia has only been recording significant growth in just few years ago.

Besides, political enemies always try to search for the government's weakness to seize people's heart so that they vote for them in the next presidential and general elections.

For non-governmental organizations who always criticize the government, even though sometimes their data are not accurate, their critics should be regarded as a social control.

Opinion of political enemies and NGOs is based on certain poverty cases while the government bases their statistics on condition of the entire nation.

That's why even though the government claims that it manages to reduce poverty rate year-by-year, its enemies and critical NGOs always say that there still many people live in poverty.

Surely, the government cannot eradicate poverty 100 percent, but what it deserves credit on what it has been done for years.

Furthermore, the Ministry of National Development Planning has set 2012 programs to keep reducing poverty rate.

Minister for National Development Planning Armida Alisjahbana said that her ministry has set four clusters to elevate poverty.

"Initially we have social aid-based programs for individual and households, public empowerment-based program and micro-small- medium enterprise-based one," said Alisjahbana.

She added that the government has extended the cluster, in which the fourth one is based on idea how to provide opportunities for less unlucky people to gain assets with subsidy mechanism.

"This includes very affordable house, cheap public transportation, cheap electricity and other programs to increase livelihood of fishermen and poor urban people. With the fourth cluster, we don't only fortify the programs, but we also extend them," she said.

Vice Finance Minister Anny Ratnawati said that positive macro economy, that surely strongly effects on the government's efforts in combating poverty would be sourced from rising government and public consumption, increasing investment and good development in export and import.

However, without support from all nation's elements and people, the government will face hard times to fight against poverty.

Therefore, the government should not be annoyed by actions to delegitimize its efforts so it could concentrate to increase people's prosperity.

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