The Poverty Rate In The City Of Surabaya Continues To Decrease

Mayor of Surabaya Eri Cahyadi. (ANTARA/HO-Diskominfo Surabaya)

SURABAYA - The poverty rate in the city of Surabaya, East Java, has continued to decline in recent years.

The number of poor people in the city of Surabaya has decreased from 152.49 thousand people (5.23 percent) in 2021 to 138.21 thousand people (4.72 percent) in 2022 and 136.37 thousand people (4.65 percent) in 2023.

The extreme poverty rate in the city of Surabaya also decreased from 1.2 percent in 2021 to 0.8 percent in 2022 with the number of extreme poor people reducing from around 35 thousand to around 23 thousand people during that period.

The Surabaya City Government received fiscal incentives from the central government thanks to the success of reducing poverty.

"Alhamdulillah, we received fiscal incentives of Rp. 6.4 billion in the performance category of eradicating extreme poverty," said Surabaya Mayor Eri Cahyadi as quoted by ANTARA, Monday, November 21.

"This is our spirit to continue to innovate in the future," he said.

Head of the Regional Development Planning, Research and Development Agency of the City of Surabaya, Febrina Kusumawat, said that the reduction in poverty could not be separated from breakthrough programs run by the city government to overcome poverty.

In addition to providing social assistance to the poor, the Surabaya City Government runs a labor-intensive program that includes 23 types of businesses to increase the income of poor families and develop e-Peken applications to support the development of grocery store businesses.

"In addition, there is also a job fair that directly connects job seekers with companies that require labor," said Febrina.

The Surabaya City Government is building synergies between regional apparatus organizations to tackle poverty.

"Currently, all regional apparatus within the Surabaya City Government are given the same responsibility to jointly eradicate poverty," said Febrina.