Despite a decades-old family planning program, Indonesia continues to be unable to control population increase and now faces serious social and economical problems due to overpopulation.
With about 4.2 million babies being born yearly, the country’s total population reached 240 million in 2009, a government agency said.
The National Population and Family Planning Board, established by the 2009 Law on population growth and family development, on Tuesday urged the public to take family planning seriously.
“The root cause of the population boom, which lowers quality of life, is a lack of knowledge about family planning,” the head of the board’s directorate of finance and budget planning, Halimah, told The Jakarta Post.
According to the ministry, 9.1 percent of fertile couples, which is the board’s main target segment, did not have access to family planning in 2009, compared to 8.6 percent in 2008.
She said the board, which prioritizes family planning to control population expansion, would benefit from the law, which bestows on it greater authority to enforce family planning regulations.
“With the new law, we encourage the government and the House of Representatives to consider the population and family planning issue a serious problem,” said Pranyoto, the deputy of the directorate for family welfare and coaching.
The new law includes population control as one of the core elements of national development. “The board will have a new function as population controller,” Halimah said.
The new law stipulates that the board move to under the auspice of the President, having formerly been a division of the Women’s Empowerment Ministry.
The board will initiate a new cooperation between government bodies and related organizations to achieve a target fertility rate of one child per mother in 2015 from 2.3 children per mother currently.
“We encourage families to have two children because they will have more opportunity to finance their children’s education,” Halimah said.
Since the Soeharto era, Indonesia has implemented a family program of “dua anak cukup” (two children are enough). However, the slogan constitutes only a recommendation and has been largely ignored.
According to the 2009 UNDP report on the Human Development Index, Indonesia ranks 111 out of 182 countries.
The HDI measures and compares life expectancy, education and living standards. It is used to distinguish developed, developing and under-developed countries. (ipa)
