Dessy Sagita, Jakarta Globe 25 Mar 10;
A lack of commitment by regional governments has hampered efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the Coordinating Ministry for People’s Welfare said on Thursday.
“Governors and mayors need to be reminded to be more involved in the effort to achieve MDG indicators because they’re the ones who really know their people,” the ministry’s secretary, Indroyono Soesilo, told a news conference.
Indroyono said most regional officials did not have any specific concept that could accelerate reaching the targets.
The MDGs set out eight universal goals for 2015 that correspond with the world’s main development challenges. They are drawn from the targets outlined in the Millennium Declaration, which was adopted by 189 nations and signed by 147 heads of state during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000.
Arum Atmawikarta, the director of public health nutrition at the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas), said most regional development planning programs did not give MDGs the proper priority.
He said many provinces did not allocate enough money to their health programs and often the central government could not interfere because of their autonomy.
“Theoretically, if we want a program to work well, we need to plan it properly, but in most regional development planning programs, MDGs are not even mentioned,” he said.
Arum said many regions of Indonesia did not deliver the correct information about their areas, making it difficult for the central government to arrange appropriate programs.
Sri Palupi, the director of Ecosoc, a nongovernmental organization focusing on reducing malnutrition in Indonesia, said that most MDG indicators did not work, especially in the poorer provinces.
She said many regional governments in poor provinces were too dependent on foreign donors.
“Instead of empowering their own people to be independent, many regional government rely on the aid provided by international NGOs. It is no wonder it is very hard to achieve the MDG indicators,” she said.
Palupi also said there had been little progress in addressing health problems in many provinces because local governments did not know how to allocate their budgets properly.
“Most of the regional budgets go to improving infrastructure and not to guaranteeing the health of mothers and their babies,” she said.
According to a 2002 nationwide demographic and health survey, Indonesia has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in Asia, with 228 mothers dying from maternity-related causes for every 100,000 births.
Compared to its Southeast Asian neighbors, Indonesia’s maternal mortality rate is 65 times that of Singapore’s, 9.5 times that of Malaysia’s, 8.9 times that of Thailand’s and 2.3 times that of the Philippines.
