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Govt turns deaf ear on land claims: Agrarian reform group

While being lauded for setting an ambitious target on a land reform program, the government has also been criticized for denying thousands of claims on land that when combined, matches Jakarta in size

Kharishar Kahfi (The Jakarta Post)
Bandung
Wed, September 26, 2018

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Govt turns deaf ear on land claims: Agrarian reform group

W

hile being lauded for setting an ambitious target on a land reform program, the government has also been criticized for denying thousands of claims on land that when combined, matches Jakarta in size.

The Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA) has issued a report on Agrarian Reform Priority Locations (LPRA) involving 444 non-forest areas that encompass more than 650,000 hectares in total and that should be certified. Some of the land are disputed.

There were at least 659 cases of agrarian conflict in 2017, covering around 520,000 ha of land and involving more than 650,000 households.

The group claimed that the government was wasting time in looking for parcels of land to be certified and people to receive the deeds, while land is actually available and have been suggested to the government.

“If the government wants to reach the target of distributing 9 million ha of land, it shouldn’t be reluctant in solving those land-use related conflicts and redistribute the disputed land to the people,” KPA secretary-general Dewi Kartika told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday on the sidelines of the 2018 Global Land Forum.

Introduced in 2016, the agrarian reform program is President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s flagship program, in which the government is expected to legalize and redistribute 9 million ha of land under the land objects for agrarian reform (TORA) scheme.

The reform’s purpose was to create a more fair land-ownership structure — as most of the land in the country have been owned by only few people or groups — and solve land-use conflicts.

The program is far from reaching its target, with the government having legalized and redistributed only around 3.1 million ha of land under the scheme, according to the latest data from the Agrarian and Spatial Planning Ministry.

The ministry has also reserved 400,000 ha of abandoned land across the country to be redistributed to people who are in need of them, including landless farmers and indigenous people.

But the consortium claimed it was still not enough, as 2014 ministry records showed that the country has at least 2 million ha of abandoned lands.

Responding to the KPA’s claim, the defense minister’s expert on agrarian reform and former Agrarian and Spatial Planning Ministry secretary-general, Noor Marzuki, said the government settled on 400,000 ha of abandoned land because the figure was deemed feasible.

“It is impossible for us to distribute them all at the same time as we are facing a limited budget, personnel and equipment to keep track of all of the land,” Noor told the Post.

He added it might be impossible for the government to employ the radical approach and take over pieces of abandoned land arbitrarily, as it would need to investigate why the land had been left behind in the first place.

The point of the program is not only to take over and redistribute land, but also to educate people on how to use the land for their livelihoods.

“The agrarian problems in our country is an accumulation of problems from past administrations. This is an enormous task for us. We should be prudent in carrying it out, so we won’t lose the trust of our investors,” Noor added.

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