At The End Of 2021, Vice President Ma'ruf Said That The Government Is Targeting To Solve Extreme Poverty In These 7 Provinces

Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia, Ma'ruf Amin (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - The government is targeting the completion of extreme poverty conditions in seven provinces by the end of 2021. The seven provinces are West Java, Central Java, East Java, Maluku, East Nusa Tenggara, West Papua, and Papua.

This was stated by Vice President Ma'ruf Amin while chairing the Plenary Meeting of the National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K) virtually, Wednesday, August 25.

"According to the direction of the President, the handling of extreme poverty is focused on only seven provinces for 2021", said Vice President Ma'ruf as quoted by Antara.

From each of these provinces, the Vice President continued, five regencies and cities were selected which then all represent the number of extremely poor people nationally.

"In each province, five regencies were chosen, so in total there are 35 regencies and cities to represent 20 percent of the total number of extremely poor people nationally", added the Vice President.

Regarding the budget, the government will allocate around IDR 440.69 trillion which will be used for social assistance, subsidies, and programs for empowerment activities. The distribution, IDR 272.12 trillion for the distribution of social assistance and subsidies, empowerment programs, and activities to increase productivity amounted to IDR 168.57 trillion.

Extreme Poverty

Extreme poverty is a condition in which people scarcely have basic needs, including food, clean water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education, and information.

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as people living on less than 1.90 US dollars per person per day.

Nationally, referring to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the number of poor people in Indonesia is 27.54 million people, while the extremely poor are 10.86 million people.

Based on National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K) data, national extreme poverty data are in 212 districts and cities from 25 provinces.

"So what we have to reduce is this 10.86 million. From the mapping made by TNP2K, these are in 212 urban districts from 25 provinces, which are pockets of poverty with coverage of 75 percent of the total poor", he explained.

Therefore, Vice President Ma'ruf hopes that line ministries and non-ministerial government institutions (K/L) can prioritize reducing extreme poverty in the seven provinces.