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Prabowo camp eyes water crisis solution
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Presidential candidate and Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto speaks on Dec. 12, 2023, during the first presidential election debate at the General Elections Commission (KPU) office in Jakarta. (AFP/Yasuyoshi Chiba)
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rabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka will commit to addressing a growing water crisis as one of the nonmilitary threats the country faces, a member of the campaign team has said.
Budisatrio Djiwandono, a member of the camp’s communications division, said that the candidate pairing would highlight the issue if elected, considering its potential impact on the livelihoods of many people.
The lack of clean water availability has been a widespread concern that even the United Nations has designated a global crisis, Budisatrio said. In 2018, a water crisis in the country affected 7.7 million people across 11 provinces.
“As defense minister, Pak Prabowo will work toward [solving the problem] as part of his commitment,” he said in a press statement on Saturday, as quoted by Kompas.com.
“The water crisis underpins low quality of life and has had a direct impact on health and sanitation.”
As defense minister, Prabowo set up a clean water task force composed of experts from the State Defense University (Unhan), whose task is to map out and execute a program to drill boreholes to act as artesian wells in prone-drought regions.
“So far, Pak Prabowo has officiated 110 clean water hubs, with more than 138 boreholes and their associated clean water distribution points built and presented to local communities in Maluku, East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara, as well as several provinces in Java,” Budisatrio said.
As part of their mission to achieve clean water self-sufficiency in Indonesia, Budisatrio said Prabowo and Gibran would look into more methods of distributing clean water, such as expanding the boring of artesian wells in underserved regions, improving river watershed areas or introducing larger treated water pipe networks.
“Overcoming the water crisis is an important priority for us. Besides the fact that it is part of our nation’s defense doctrine, it has become even more important because of the uncertainty of the climate crisis,” the campaigner said.
Over the past year, Indonesia suffered from an immense dry spell across several regions caused in part by the onset of the El Nino climate phenomenon.
Since becoming defense minister in 2019, Prabowo has allocated the ministry’s resources to arms procurement and non-military threats such as food insecurity.
