Governor Viktor Claims Poverty Rate In NTT Only 20 Percent

East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) Governor Viktor Bungtilu Laiskodat. (Antara)

NTT - The Governor of East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), Viktor Bungtilu Laiskodat, claimed that the poverty rate in the area he leads is only 20 percent, down from 21 percent in 2018.

"When we became governor, poverty in NTT reached 21 percent, and the percentage of poor people in 2019 decreased to 20.62 percent and rose again in 2021 to reach 20.90 percent", said Viktor when contacted in Kupang, Sunday, September 11.

He said the increase in the number of poor people in NTT was the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Including the natural disaster, tropical cyclone, and the attack of ASF livestock disease which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of livestock belonging to residents.

According to him, the NTT Provincial Government has made various efforts to overcome poverty in the form of community economic empowerment program interventions so that the number of poor people in NTT has reached 20.5 percent.

"At other times the number of poverty increases but NTT continues to decline because the NTT government continues to intervene in various economic empowerment programs such as the cattle-harvesting corn planting program (TJSP) as an effort to accelerate poverty alleviation which has a considerable economic impact", said Viktor.

He said the only province in Indonesia for the east where the number of poor people fell was only NTT.

He explained that there needs to be a collaboration between various parties in NTT in overcoming poverty so that the number continues to decline.

Viktor said he was optimistic that the number of poor people would fall to below 20 percent if all parties in NTT worked together in efforts to reduce the number of poor people by conducting various collaborative poverty alleviation program interventions.