Accurate poverty data 'needs community help'

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sat, 09/15/2007 2:40 PM

Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post, Makassar

Community involvement is essential if data on poverty is to be accurate, a discussion has concluded.

The discussion was part of the launch of a book dealing with the same topic at Development Support Facility of Eastern Indonesia (Sofei) in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

The book details how community-based poverty data was used in West Sulawesi's Binuang district in 2005.

Muhammad Nehru Sagena, then Binuang district head, employed community-based data collection after witnessing widespread dysfunction in the provision of rice, cash assistance and health insurance to the poor.

Muhammad found inaccuracies not only in the aggregate number of poor, but also in cases of the genuinely poor being left off lists for the distribution of aid, while those that did not deserve it were left on.

The chief field officer of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Makassar, Purwanta Iskandar, said inaccurate poverty data was one the causes of slow progress in solving social problems such as poverty, unemployment, malnutrition and the high school dropout rate.

""As long as there is no accurate data on poverty, it's very difficult for the government to prepare the right programs and solutions to deal with poverty or complete the nine-year compulsory education program.

""Inaccurate data will always cause problems like those that are happening now,"" Purwanta said.

Purwanta said poverty data was directly linked to people's sovereignty. If the data is correct, the people's sovereignty is respected; if it is not right, then the people are denied their right to climb out of poverty.

He insisted there is a need to modernize how poverty data is collected by involving the poor themselves in collecting it.

""This method will make people realize the situation of poverty that is around them. It will help move those who are still unaware of the situation and raise awareness about doing something, together, to fight poverty,"" Purwanta said.

An economic expert from the Makassar-based Hasanuddin University, Madjid Sallatu, said community-based collection was good for producing accurate data, but it was difficult to generalize beyond the local level because poverty indicators often differed from region to region.

However, he said this shortcoming should not prevent the method from being used immediately throughout the country.

""There is an urgent need to provide manual guidelines on the data registration process using this method to allow other district heads to use it as an example,"" Madjid said.

Women's activist Huseima Husain said poverty data should take into account women's views, since women usually handled their families' finances.

The newly launched book says that the community effort in Binuang produced more than just accurate poverty data.

The data collection was also able to find a number of residents who did not have family and identity cards as well as children who did not have birth certificates or were not able to attend school.

The Binuang community data collection effort found there were less poor in the regency than was estimated by the Central Statistics Bureau. However, the involvement of the community in the data collection meant this fact was accepted by the local population.

Polewali Mandar Deputy Regent Yusuf Tuali said the community data had helped his administration deal with social problems such as school dropouts and the provision of health insurance.

He said the regency planned to implement the method across all its districts.

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