Jambi – Traditional communities and farmers in Indonesia, particularly in Jambi province, Sumatra, are still falling victim to disadvantageous government policies and as a consequence both groups suffer from high levels of poverty.

Almost three-quarters out of 40 million poor people in Indonesia are farmers and members of traditional communities said Isti Komah, the public relations officer for the Jambi branch of the Preparatory Committee for the National Liberation Party of Unity (KP-Papernas) on Thursday.

This poverty occurs because the development programs implemented by the government have yet to be able to comprehensively reach rural communities. Whereas 70 percent of Indonesia’s people work as farmers and are still living below the poverty line.

Government policies that are unpopular and bring suffering to farmers include increases to the price of fertilizer and fuel that implicitly have an impact on farmers and traditional communities that become the victims.

Farmers become the victims of these policies and continue to be poor because of limited access to business capital and the burden of daily living expenses as a result of the high cost of production.

Moreover, the government’s now has a policy to import rice, so the problems will further hem in farmers because it will cause the price of Indonesian farmers’ unhulled rice to decline dramatically said Komah.

The main reason for all of this is the yearly increases to fertilizer prices while subsidies are cut and production of natural gas is “pawned off” to foreign companies.

Farmers and traditional communities are also hemmed in by problems of land and agricultural conflicts with parent companies that are unable to be resolved by the government.

The government’s claims that it has succeeded in reducing poverty totally contradicts with data from the Indonesian Autonomous Institute that shows as of April last year poverty had reached 22 percent of the total Indonesian population of 220 million people. (ant)

[Translated by James Balowski.]