Badanas Prioritizes Food Control Intervention In Eastern Indonesia

Photo: Doc. Antara

JAKARTA - The National Food Agency (Bapanas) stated that food control interventions in eastern tip Indonesia are a priority to reduce extreme poverty.

"The National Food Agency or National Food Agency is committed to supporting the reduction in extreme poverty in Indonesia. As part of this effort, NFA prioritizes food control interventions in eastern tip Indonesia," said Director of Food Insecurity Control at Badanas Sri Nuyanti in a statement in Jakarta, quoted from Antara, Tuesday 23 July.

Nuyanti said that her party realized that eastern Indonesia had its own challenges related to adequate and quality food accessibility.

"Therefore, Badanas prioritizes food vulnerability control interventions in the region, especially since the extreme poverty rate in Papua Province is quite high," said Nuryanti.

He explained that the intervention assistance for controlling food vulnerability is a form of assistance distributed by the government through the National Food Agency.

The government, continued Nurhayati, through the assignment of the National Food Agency to Bulog, has distributed 10 kg of rice food assistance (Bandang) per KPM. Even so, he did not mention in detail the amount of aid that had been distributed.

"This food vulnerability control intervention is in the form of food assistance packages. The rice has received 10 kg, then we provide food vulnerability control intervention packages in the form of cow cornets, sardines, corn seeds, green beans, cooking oil and sodium salt," explained Nuryanti.

He said the food vulnerability control intervention was one of the efforts to accelerate the elimination of extreme poverty to 0 percent by 2024 according to President Joko Widodo's direction as stated in Presidential Instruction (Inpres) Number 4 of 2022 concerning the Acceleration of the Elimination of Extreme Poverty.

Through the Presidential Instruction, both governors and regents/mayors are assigned to coordinate and directly lead efforts to accelerate the elimination of extreme poverty in their respective regions.

He said, based on data from the Coordinating Ministry for Human Development and Culture (Kemenko PMK), extreme poverty in Indonesia as of March 2023 was at 1.12 percent. This figure decreased by 0.92 percentage points when compared to March 2022 data.

"Papua is the province with the highest extreme poverty rate in Indonesia, which is 7.67 percent," he said.

Nuryanti emphasized that as an area with a wealth of diverse food resources, building food security in Papua must be based on local food.

"The right and left roads are filled with sago forests, each house is fenced with dilor. This is a good potential to be utilized optimally. Therefore, as always conveyed by the Head of the National Food Agency, Pak Arief Prasetyo Adi, that we must work together to continue to encourage education and assistance in food patterns based on local food sources," he said.

He hopes that the local government cooperates with universities to educate vulnerable people who are prone to food and assist with real work lecture programs as a form of community service.

"Don't forget to invite a scholar from Papua to build the land of Cenderawasih armed with the knowledge he proposed," said Nuyanti.