KPK Identify Potential Corruption In This Year's Stunting Prevention Program
JAKARTA - The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) claimed to have received public complaints regarding the management of stunting reduction program funds in the regions.
This prompted the KPK to hold a Coordination Meeting on Information Support for the Regional Government's Stunting Reduction Acceleration Program on Tuesday, February 22.
When opening the meeting, the Director of Supervision Coordination (Korsup) Region III of the KPK, Bahtiar Ujang Purnama, mentioned that there are a number of potential risks in stunting prevention programs in the regions.
"KPK has identified several potential risks of corruption in the stunting prevention program in 2022, namely in the procurement, distribution and implementation of interventions to accelerate the reduction of stunting programs, as well as in identifying the accuracy of targeting program recipients such as data collection, distribution, and evaluation," Bahtiar said in a written statement. In addition, other potentials in the form of indications of fictitious activities at the central government level to sub-district or village levels as well as budget duplication were also detected by the KPK.
With this condition, Bahtiar asked for an explanation from the relevant parties regarding the progress of the National Strategy for the Acceleration of Stunting Reduction Program that had been carried out by the regional government.
Moreover, there are currently a number of provinces where the stunting prevalence rate is above 30 percent. "Is there a special strategy to accelerate stunting reduction there? Because to reach the 14 percent target, there are only 2 years left until 2024," said Bahtiar.
Coordination Meeting for Information Support Coordination of the Local Government Stunting Reduction Program between the KPK and a number of online parties/KPK Public Relations
In response to this, the Deputy for Human Development Policy Support and Development Equity at the Vice President's Secretariat (Setwapres) Suprayoga Hadi explained that the team formed to reduce stunting had succeeded in reducing the stunting rate from 27 percent to 21 percent in 2021.
Even so, his party continues to pay attention to the seven provinces in the country, namely NTT, West Sulawesi, Aceh, NTB, Southeast Sulawesi, South Kalimantan and West Kalimantan because the prevalence of stunting is still high.
"Efforts to accelerate there must be more special, more extraordinary. There are also 5 provinces that have a large number of stunting, because the population is dense. Namely West Java, Central Java, East Java, Banten, and North Sumatra. So those 12 provinces need special emphasis in 2022 to 2024 ," he insisted.
Meanwhile, the Deputy for Human Development, Community and Culture of the Ministry of National Development Planning/Bappenas Subandi said the budget for the acceleration of stunting alleviation is indeed large. So it needs maximum supervision for the community.
For information, the budget for stunting prevention is increasing every year. If in 2018 the budget provided was Rp. 24 trillion, in 2021 yesterday the budget reached Rp. 35.3 trillion.
By looking at these figures, Subandi believes that the KPK really needs to be present to prevent the occurrence of corruption gaps in the midst of alleviating malnutrition which is detrimental to Indonesia's demographics.
"We need to cooperate with the KPK because the allocation of funds is large and the target location is wide. We hope that this allocation is right on target," he concluded.