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In West Papua, progress begins with good civil registration
Papua and West Papua are among the poorest provinces in Indonesia and they are in dire need of accurate data to help them channel their large development funds
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Floating playground: Children play around a ship at a port in Manokwari, West Papua. (JP/Jerry Adiguna)
D
aud Demi, 31, a resident of Muari Village in South Manokwari, West Papua, has found a new calling as his village’s data-pooling man under the Village Administration and Information System (SAIK) program.
“I only graduated elementary school and since then had been working odd jobs to earn a little money to support my family,” Daud told The Jakarta Post in South Manokwari recently. “Now I collect data from my neighbors to help the government make significant decisions to help residents in need.”
Daud was chosen to be his village’s SAIK data collector in May 2017 when Indonesian-Australian partnership, KOMPAK LANDASAN, organized a workshop and training on SAIK.
At that time, they introduced SAIK and a similar program for district level, SAID, as a pilot scheme in Fakfak, Kaimana, South Manokwari, and Sorong in West Papua, and in Asmat, Waropen, Boven Digoel, Lanny Jaya, Jayapura and Nabire in Papua.
Daud, who was chosen because he was among the few who were literate in his village, had to learn how to operate a laptop and afterward how to input residents’ data into SAIK software.
“I needed three months to learn how to operate the laptop,” he said, laughing. “I started by learning how to turn it on and off, then I learned how to operate the applications.”
Later, Daud started to collect data on his neighbors door to door.
