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Rural electrification program needs evaluation, says LIPI
The government should evaluate the countryâs rural electrification program to ensure its sustainability, an economic researcher says
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he government should evaluate the country's rural electrification program to ensure its sustainability, an economic researcher says.
'There has been the government electrification program in rural areas, but there hasn't been a proper evaluation on it,' Maxensius Tri Sambodo of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) said in a discussion on national energy at the LIPI building in Jakarta on Friday.
He said that the government should be able to identify whether or not the existing program had ensured the sustainability of power sources, such as in the case of the country's eastern region where the electrification ratio is still low and people are highly dependent on solar panels as power generators.
'When the solar panel is broken, can they fix it? We don't want that when the electrification target is reached, but then it cannot sustain for a long time,' he said.
More than 11 million houses in remote rural areas have not yet been electrified.
President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo has targeted to electrify 96.6 percent of houses in rural areas by 2019. (fsu)(+++)
