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Eradicate poverty through job creation, not assistance: Indef
The government has been advised to focus on job creation in trying to alleviate poverty in the country because the existing social assistance program is inefficient at reducing the number of poor people in the country.
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Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) executive director Enny Sri Hartati (finansial.bisnis.com/via tribunnews.com)
T
he government has been advised to focus on job creation in trying to alleviate poverty in the country because the existing social assistance program is inefficient at reducing the number of poor people in the country.
"The government should focus more on job-creation programs instead of focusing on social assistance programs because poor people live below the poverty line because they don't have any income," Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) executive director Enny Sri Hartati told thejakartapost.com on Tuesday.
According to the latest Central Statistics Agency (BPS) data on the poverty rate, there were 28.01 million people living below poverty line, 10.86 percent of the population, in March, down by 500,000 from 28.51 million, 11.35 percent, from the same period in the previous year.
Sri stressed the social assistance program conducted by the government should only be a safety net in case of an economic shock in the community not as a policy to address the problem long-term.
According to BPS data, Java has proportionately the largest number of people living below the poverty line, with 14.97 million people, 53.45 percent of the total poor in Indonesia.
However, this figure is a decline from 15.45 million in March 2015, with Java being the second wealthiest region in Indonesia in 2016.
Kalimantan is the wealthiest region. The number of people living below the poverty there is 970,000, 6.26 percent of Kalimantan's total population. (bbn)
