Vice President Ma’ruf Amin has said that funding is not the primary challenge faced by the government in tackling extreme poverty in seven priority provinces, including East Java.

“I think funding is not the main issue in addressing extreme poverty,” he stated in Surabaya on Thursday.

The biggest challenge for both the regional and central governments is ensuring that the beneficiaries of programs targeting the poor receive the assistance meant for them, Amin said.

“Our biggest challenge is ensuring that all programs from the central government, provincial governments, and district governments can be accepted by extremely poor households in their regions,” he explained.

The government only has until the end of 2021 to resolve extreme poverty in some regions, he highlighted.

He then urged East Java Governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa and the heads of five prioritized East Java districts to work hard towards realizing social assistance and empowerment programs for the extremely poor.

The five districts are Probolinggo, Bojonegoro, Lamongan, Bangkalan, and Sumenep.

“The next challenge is that we have three months left in 2021. It is very difficult to solve extreme poverty with regular programs,” the Vice President remarked.

East Java is one of the seven provinces that have been included in the government’s list of regions prioritized for extreme poverty eradication efforts. The government is targeting to bring down the extreme poverty rate in the provinces to zero percent by the end of 2021.

There are a total of 508,571 extremely poor people in the five prioritized districts of East Java, and a total of 265,180 extremely poor households, Amin noted.

Earlier, in Bandung, West Java on Tuesday (September 29, 2021), he had said that the program was part of efforts to restore the national economy, which has been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: Antara News