Thousands of families in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) are reportedly facing difficulties in accessing administrative services, education and healthcare facilities.
Most of them come from the province’s most isolated regencies.
Based on data released by NTB’s Central Statistics Agency this year, the number of isolated families in 2009 stood at 9,497.
They were found in West Lombok (791 families), East Lombok (1,116), Sumbawa (941), West Sumbawa (27), Dompu (5,091), Bima (1,523) and Bima City (8).
According to the head of the NTB Social, Population Affairs and Civil Registry Office, Bachruddin, isolated communities are one of the province’s most pressing issues apart from poverty and child neglect.
The communities generally live in groups far from village centers, or on mountain slopes and forest fringes.
They still depend on surrounding natural resources to survive, while education and healthcare are luxuries they have little access to.
“The provincial administration will continue to empower [those communities] so that all people in NTB can benefit from development,” Bachruddin told The Jakarta Post in Mataram recently.
The community empowerment program will be incorporated as part of activities by the Isolated Traditional Groups program initiated by the central government in 2004.
According to an official responsible for the program, Tasripin, the isolated community empowerment program is time-consuming, as it needs three years just for problem mapping and counseling.
“Since their locations are geographically harsh and hard to reach, the isolated community empowerment program could not be carried out,” said Tasripin.
Consequently, as many as 1,210 families in remote areas in NTB have never benefitted from the program. They are found across four regencies — West Lombok, East Lombok, Sumbawa and Bima.
Last year, the empowerment program in NTB reached out to 191 families in remote areas in the three regencies of East Lombok, Sumbawa and Bima.
Although the programs tended to be slow in their implementation, the pattern carried out in NTB served as a model for 14 provinces in eastern Indonesia.
At the end of March, representatives from social services offices in 14 other provinces, such as Papua, West Papua, Maluku, West Sulawesi and Gorontalo directly observed the program in action in Batu Jong in East Lombok.
“They were impressed by the housing complex built as part of the program,” Tasripin said.
Administratively, Batu Jong is part of Landean hamlet, Bilik Petung village, Sembalun district, East Lombok.
However, some 200 families there have to walk up to 5 kilometers to get to the village center, where healthcare facilities and schools are located.
“It takes up to three hours to reach the [village] on foot because the route is impassable to vehicles, even motorcycles. Elementary school pupils leave home at 7 a.m. to reach school by 10 a.m. They often don’t get home until late afternoon,” said Tasripin.
Conditions have improved, he added, since residents built a road at their own expense.
He said isolated communities in NTB were unlike the Badui traditional community in Banten province, or the Dani tribe in Papua, because in NTB, isolated communities are not part of a traditional community that are closed and homogeneous, as stipulated by a 1999 Presidential Decree.
“Many of those in the remote locations have married outsiders and interacted culturally,” he said.
