Comment: SOE CSR must aim to reduce poverty: SBY

Feb. 8, Online

President Susilo Bambang Yu-dhoyono called on all state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to integrate their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs into the government’s efforts to alleviate poverty.

“The amount of CSR funds from SOEs is quite big. We can do many things to help local people living around the companies reduce their economic burdens,” he said at the opening of a Cabinet meeting at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Wednesday.

Your comments:

In most cases in Indonesia, CSR tends to be looked upon as a voluntary initiative where companies commit themselves to integrating social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interactions with stakeholders.

These include their workers, suppliers, local communities, the government, nonprofit organizations and customers.

These CSR acts may or may not involve tax exemption both for the givers and the recipients. Companies here have traditionally been involved in charity, community building and other such likes.

If companies need to be convinced about the value of CSR, civil society is probably the most compelling because it places such activities in the context of nation building.

But since it is done on a loose basis (except for those companies engaging in extraction of natural resources where CSR is compulsory and they may be sanctioned for non compliance), CSR tends to be a mere public relations tool.

People can see that CSR adoption by companies does not stop their violations of social and environmental surroundings, knowingly or not.

And on the recipients’ half it tends to be regarded as charity, theirs to have anyway.
Armand E. Maris
Jakarta