Lukas Enembe (left) and Luhut B. Panjaitan (right) in Jayapura – Jubi
Jayapura, Jubi – Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan said there had been no improvement in Human Development Index for Papua Province, indicating possible misuse or inefficient use of development funds.
“It’s a problem. It means the absorption of funds was not proper. You can see the absorption of funds since 2007 to present; it’s still the same,” Pandjaitan said.
“It happened because of one thing, that we did not use the development funds in Papua properly,” said Pandjaitan in front of the Regional Heads Communication Forum, community leaders, religious leaders, customary leaders and academicians on Thursday in Jayapura (11/8/2016).
He further emphasized that special autonomy funds have not been significantly useful. Thus, the education and health sectors must be improved.
“Actually I have said to the Attorney General George Brendis for Australia to involve helping us in education and health. Didn’t ask for money. We have enough of it. We need their technology to combat various disorders occurred in here,” he said.
In line with this, he noticed all stakeholders in Papua not to argue against each other about unnecessary things, because the education and health are very important. “Now if we look at the Human Development Index at district level in Papua, it is below to the national and provincial average. It becomes a problem to us. I will give the data to Regional Secretary for review, because our data showed that the average HDI at district and provincial levels are below to the national average,” said Pandjaitan.
According to him, to let this happening is very risky and Papua would increasingly retarded though it received the large funds. “This is another indication of improper management,” he said.
Concerning to the funds, he said, actually there’s no problem, because the funds installed for Papua such as Regional Budget Funds, Special Autonomy Funds, Funds from the Ministry are significantly enough, around USD 10 billion. “Now it’s just about how to manage it. Along with the Coordinating Ministry of Politic, Legal and Security Affairs Wiranto, we committed to ensure these funds could be properly managed. If not, Papua will remain retarded,” he said. (Alexander Loen)
