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Emotional SBY hands out land reform deeds
In an emotional ceremony on Thursday, the President gave 260 hectares of land to more than 5,100 Central Java farmers, as part of the government’s land reform program
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n an emotional ceremony on Thursday, the President gave 260 hectares of land to more than 5,100 Central Java farmers, as part of the government’s land reform program.
Farmers in four villages in Cilacap in Central Java each received 500 square meters of land.
Symbolic land certificates were given to 10 farmers by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in a ceremony at the State Palace in Bogor, West Java, to commemorate National Land Day and the 50th anniversary of the implementation of the Land Law.
The President seemed to be overcome by emotion at the event. At one point in his speech, Yudhoyono had difficulty speaking and appeared to be on the verge of tears.
“I was touched to see how our brothers — poor farmers who previously had nothing — now have some certified land,” he told ministers at a Cabinet meeting later that afternoon.
The President expressed his hope that the Lands for Justice and People’s Welfare program would help change the lives of farmers, and that local administrations could combine the land distribution program with KUR microlending programs.
“So we have given the people some capital to empower them. Hopefully it can improve their economy. Poverty eradication programs should not all be about programs that would make people always dependent,” Yudhoyono said.
At the ceremony, National Land Agency (BPN) head Joyo Winoto said the land reform program would redistribute 142,159 hectares of land in 2010.
The land, scattered over 389 villages in 21 provinces, was originally the subject of disputes between local communities and the holders of business operation permits.
The locals had no land to farm while the companies allegedly neglected their lands for years.
The disputes were later mediated by the BPN.
“The redistribution of lands in Cilacap is just a small example of the success of the land reform. We will develop it, expanding the coverage,” Joyo said.
Yudhoyono said there might be millions of hectares of abandoned land in Indonesia that might be better used by local people for farming.
“There are many disputed lands whose statuses we should finalize immediately so that we can use it for development,” he said.
“Upon identifying such lands, I hope you settle the status soon… thus we can use some of them for development projects and distribute others to the people, to give them some source of income,” he said at the opening of the Cabinet meeting discussing the budget.
Yudhoyono told the BPN and other related central government officials to work with local administrations to complete their task.
Land reform was part of the New Order’s policies in the 1960s. Yudhoyono relaunched the program in 2007 with the intention of improving people’s welfare.
The Indonesian Communist Party reached its height in the 1960s, thanks in part to the party’s policy that supported the acquisition of land by peasants from traditional landlords.
