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Village data revamped for accuracy, progress
The Villages, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Ministry has discovered a substantial discrepancy between the data it has collected from villages and the data gathered by Statistics Indonesia (BPS), which could possibly affect policy making and rural development.
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Villagers ride a motorcycle along a newly repaired road in Minahasa Baji village, South Sulawesi, on Nov. 29, 2019. The road repairs were financed by village funds.
(Antara/ Basri Marzuki)
Yvette Tanamal
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The Villages, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Ministry has discovered a substantial discrepancy between the data it has collected from villages and the data gathered by Statistics Indonesia (BPS), which could possibly affect policy making and rural development.
The deviation of figures was discovered in the census survey, whereby the ministry believes that BPS records are short nearly 100 million village residents. Consequently, figures relating to education, employment and poverty will be affected.
Minister Abdul Halim Iskandar noted that such an inaccuracy could hinder progress toward achieving the Village Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs Desa) and require a new, revamped method of data collection.
Abdul said that inferring from the ministry’s current data collection and information from the civil registry database at the Home Ministry, there is a “big probability” that there are a total of 214 million Indonesians living in villages, a divergence of almost 100 million from the BPS’ figure of 117 million village residents.
“The agency said that 43 percent of all Indonesians live in villages, whereas data collected by the civil registry office derived from citizens’ addresses reveal that the figure is 71 percent,” the minister told The Jakarta Post recently.
