Vice President Ma'ruf Challenge For The Governors

JAKARTA - Vice President Ma'ruf Amin has a number of challenges for governors throughout Indonesia. Ma'ruf asked the governors to make breakthroughs in solving a number of crucial problems in society.

This statement was made by Ma'ruf at the opening of the 6th National Conference of the Association of Provincial Governments of Indonesia. This event was held at Hotel Borobudur, Central Jakarta.

National Conference is the right moment for Ma'ruf to ask governors to evaluate work programs and prepare future work programs.

First, Ma'ruf asked the governor to be serious about alleviating poverty in each of his leadership areas. However, it is recognized that the poverty rate has decreased to 9.41 percent in the last 5 years.

"This is the first time that Indonesia's poverty rate has decreased to less than 1 digit. However, this must be our main concern. Although the decline is still very large, namely in the range of 25 million people," said Ma'ruf, Monday, November 25.

Second, Ma'ruf asked the heads of these provinces to prevent an increase in the stunting rate. Stunting is a condition in which a child has a height lower than the standard age.

Recently, stunting has become a health problem that has been focused on by the central government. One in three toddlers is stunted. Therefore, the government is targeting a 20 percent reduction in stunting by 2024.

"Weak coordination has made it difficult to prevent stunting from being completely accepted up to the village. In fact, so far there has been a large enough budget available, spread through APBN, APBD, special allocations, and village funds. It needs great attention because besides being the main burden, this non-communicable disease is actually caused by unhealthy life behavior, "said Ma'ruf.

Furthermore, Ma'ruf is concerned about the high rate of maternal mortality, infant mortality, and immunization. The current maternal mortality rate is around 305 per 100 thousand births. The infant mortality rate is also still high, at 24 per 1000 deaths.

Meanwhile, the proportion of complete basic immunization decreased from 59.2 percent in 2013 to 57.9 percent in 2018.

"One of the causes is the issue of halal vaccines. Even though the MUI has issued a fatwa, it has not been intensively socialized (at the regional level)," he explained.

Furthermore, Indonesia must deal with the difficulty of school sustainability between levels of education, especially from poor families. Based on data, only 60 percent of people continue to junior high school. Meanwhile, only 30 percent continue to high school. Then, 4 percent continued to PT.

"The drop out rate is due to costs, school-age children have to work, early marriage, and feel that their education is sufficient. In between our efforts there are still 3.6 million children who are at school age but not in school," he said.

Finally, another challenge that the governors need to pay attention to is efforts to increase the protection of families and children. Ma'ruf appealed to the government in each province to form a commission for child protection in each region.

"Children must be protected from various violence, teachings of intolerance, teachings of hostility. I urge the regional government to form a commission for the protection of regional children in Indonesia," he concluded.