“There are 600,000 hectares of land that is ready to be converted into a transmigration area both for local residents and those from Java,” said Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Ministry’s development and people’s empowerment director general Ahmad Erani Yustika in Jakarta on Friday as reported by tempo.co.

He declined to divulge the exact location of the property, revealing only that it is located in Kalimantan.

The transmigration program facilitates people who wanted to become farmers by providing them with sufficient agricultural land.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many residents of Java and Bali moved to Sumatra, Kalimantan and even Papua, but currently, the government is now inviting locals to take part in the program.

Erani said with the program, his ministry is also supporting a land reform campaign, in which the government distributes plots of mostly forest lands to farmers from 74,910 villages.

“About 40 percent of the 74,910 villages have forest territories. There are also villages that have  mining areas and social forests controlled by the Environmental Affairs and Forestry Ministry,” he added. (bbn)

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