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Govt told to work on implementing Village Law
The Regional Information and Research Center (Pattiro) said the government should conduct a thorough examination on drafting implementing regulations for the newly passed Village Law
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he Regional Information and Research Center (Pattiro) said the government should conduct a thorough examination on drafting implementing regulations for the newly passed Village Law.
One of the most crucial issues to be addressed was how best to manage the large budgets allocated to villages, it added.
'People in villages should be able to benefit from the use of the budget, so the government must precisely stipulate the allocations of the budgets,' Pattiro executive director Sad Dian Utomo said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
He said there should be clear stipulations on, for instance, the percentage of an overall village budget that may be used on personnel expenditures such as salaries and allowances; the minimum percentage to be used on improving public services; and the minimum percentage allocated for empowering the poor.
'Such stipulations are very important to avoid the irresponsible and inefficient use of a budget by village officials,' Sad said.
Pattiro said the new law was important for villages as they would have more funds to ensure that their residents became more prosperous.
Article 72 of the Village Law stipulates that village budgets should account for 10 percent of the total regional funds allocated in the state budget (APBN). The government has allocated Rp 592 trillion (US$48.5 billion) as regional funds in the 2014 state budget.
'As we have 72,944 villages, each village will receive an average of Rp 800 million per year,' said Sad.
Earlier, Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi said the Village Law could not be implemented until 2015 because the government needed one year to prepare the implementing regulations for it. (ebf)
