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Indonesia's transmigration program moves more people outside Java, but they remain poor
People in transmigration sites still live with no electricity and poor infrastructure support.
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Tobias Akut, 65, repairs his makeshift house in Ranakolong village in East Manggarai regency, East Nusa Tenggara, on Nov. 8. More people have been moved to the province, but infrastructure and welfare in the area remain poor. (JP/Markus Makur)
T
he government has reintroduced a decades-old transmigration program with several new objectives that are expected to redistribute welfare from growth centers in Java to outside Java.
“It will not only focus on population distribution but also on economic distribution and rural development,” Villages, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Ministry secretary-general Anwar Sanusi told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
The new concept of transmigration is stipulated in the 2020-2024 Medium-Term National Development Plan (RPJMN), which will develop 52 transmigration sites into new cities. The target is higher than the target of 20 new cities set in the previous 2015-2019 RPJMN.
The new concept shows the government’s ambitious plan to use transmigration as an instrument for economic redistribution from the densely populated islands of Java and Bali to the less populated Papua, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku and Nusa Tenggara.
According to the ministry’s director-general of transmigration site development, HM Nurdin, the government has decided to increase the number of targeted areas in view of high people’s interest in joining the program. Data at the ministry shows growing participation in the program, from 1,271 families in 2018 to 1,465 families this year. The ministry has targeted to send 7,500 families to 144 transmigration sites within the next five years.
To promote ethnic diversity and encourage culture assimilation, he said the percentage of ethnic identities in transmigration sites would be managed. Furthermore, the transmigration program will not be limited to island-to-island destinations but people from one island could also migrate to different parts of the island.
“For example, we expect a transmigration site in Kalimantan to have residents consisting of 50 percent Javanese and 50 percent Balinese. This way, we can avoid conflicts. Besides, local people from Kalimantan can also migrate to other regions still located in Kalimantan. So, there would be a mix between local migrants and migrants from other islands,” Nurdin told the Post.
