Deputy Minister Of Cooperatives Says Red And White Cooperatives Can Absorb 1.6 Million Workers

BANDUNG - The Red and White Cooperative (KMP) is believed by the Deputy Minister of Cooperatives Ferry Juliantono to absorb at least 1.6 million workers from 80 thousand units planned to be formed throughout Indonesia.

"It's okay, supervisors, administrators, managers, put 20 people, multiplied by 80 thousand. That means there are 1.6 million people absorbed (in Indonesia). Not including the members who will be invited as much as possible to be productive in developing the village economy," said Ferry after the National seminar Reflection on the Ideas of the Bung Hatta Cooperative: As an Effort to Create Social Justice, at Unpad Bandung, reported by ANTARA, Saturday, May 10.

For KMP which will be formed in the near future, he said, it will be encouraged and targeted not only to become a savings and loan cooperative, but to become a productive cooperative.

"Later on, the production results, food harvests, horticulture, plantations, livestock, fisheries, will be managed by cooperatives," he said.

Because, he continued, the government wants cooperatives to no longer only manage small businesses, but may enter the mining sector, oil palm plantations and even have factories.

"In the past we had a textile industry, a textile factory, its name was a combination of batik cooperatives, we want to revive it now. There is a combination of milk cooperatives, we will build a dairy processing plant, starting from pasteurization to UHT milk production. So cooperatives must grow," he said.

The size of the cooperative, said Ferry, is in accordance with the ideals of one of the proclaimers of Indonesian independence Muhammad Hatta, whose idealism is being reviewed in this seminar, with the points that cooperatives get, they must be able to accommodate young people and become a supporter of the national economy to implement Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution which mandates the Pancasila economy.

"So our idea of cooperatives can live and develop again and we as the next generation will certainly develop it," he said.

Meanwhile, the Head of the Trustees of the Hatta Foundation, Meutia Farida Hatta, assessed that this seminar was very important because it would open up the insights of the younger generation regarding the importance of cooperatives. He also welcomed the current government's plan to advance cooperatives.

"As previously, Mr. Wamen said, reviving and of course in accordance with Bung Hatta's thoughts, so if the family and the Hatta Foundation, I think our task is to continue what was not right in the past, so we also want the role of cooperatives to enter society and also the community ready for cooperatives," said Meutia.

Brother Meutia Hatta, who was also one of the speakers at this seminar, Halida Hatta, reminded that cooperatives are one organ in which individuals must be willing to work and have dignity.

"So everyone must believe in their dignity and then want to work together to produce human resources that can work together to produce a good product, good economic work because this is an organizational life problem, economic livelihood problems, so it's not number 1 incentive, number 1 profit, not that, because it will happen automatically with hard capital," said Halida.