Indonesia
ILO work in Indonesia on local-resource intensive rural infrastructure
started in 1993 with the management of a World Bank-financed labour-based
district roads project, aiming to upgrade labour-based methods already in use in
Indonesia. Focussing on four pilot districts in two provinces, the project
successfully developed and introduced improved techniques, supervision and
organization for labour-based construction and improvement and maintenance of
local roads. The project however did not succeed in mainstreaming labour-based
technology in the country's mainstream investment programmes as the political
climate was not very receptive to the technology during the mid-90s.
As a result of the Asian financial crisis there has been a dramatic increase
in the number of Indonesians unemployed and those living in poverty. It is
estimated that unemployment will increase and that 45 million people will be
unemployed by the year 2004. In 1999 around 15% of the population lived below a
poverty line of 1 dollar a day and, around 66% below a poverty line of 2 dollar
a day. Poverty and rural infrastructure are linked, also in Indonesia, and with
the transfer of responsibilities for rural infrastructure development and
maintenance to the local governments in 2001 a new opportunity has been created
to introduce local resource intensive strategies for rural infrastructure
development in Indonesia.
ASIST-AP has been working in Indonesia at two levels to develop a national
programme for sustainable rural infrastructure development. Since 1999 it has
worked at the national level with KIMPRASWIL, BAPPENAS, the Ministry of Home
Affairs and the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs to develop a
"nation-wide programme to mainstream labour-based technology in the
country's public investment programmes" and to draft a "sustainable
rural infrastructure for employment creation and poverty alleviation
strategy".
At the local level ASIST-AP has been working since mid-2001 in collaboration
with the Gadjah Mada University with 2 Kabupaten to support the country's
decentralization process in particular in relation to rural infrastucture
development. This work is done under an Integrated Rural Accessibility Planning
(IRAP) demonstration project.
ASIST-AP has assisted in the conduct of a series of participatory workshops
at the national and local level to explore priorities and strategies for using
sustainable rural infrastructure development to create employment and alleviate
poverty in Indonesia. The workshops also identified areas for ASIST AP
assistance in developing these strategies and programmes in the context of the 4
technical fields: local level access planning, labour-based technology, small
contracting and local level maintenance systems.
Recent activities clearly demonstrate that the Government has taken on the
ASIST-AP initiative and is serious about developing sustainable rural
infrastructure development strategies. Additional support from ASIST AP remains
necessary to move the initiative forward and to develop a number of pilot
projects which will complement the work at policy level. The country strategy is
based on the priority areas for assistance identified through the different
workshops and consultations.
Country Strategy
The overall objective of ASIST-AP's work in Indonesia is to create decent
employment and alleviate poverty through sustainable rural infrastructure works.
For this reason, the Programme intends to collaborate with the Government and
the country's main donors to influence their infrastructure investment
programmes in favour of employment creation and poverty alleviation and at no
additional cost to these investment programmes. The strategy ASIST-AP has
developed to reach this objective is eight-fold:
- Assist in the establishment of a Rural Infrastructure Coordination Forum.
A "High-level Consultation Meeting on Rural Infrastructure Development
in the context of Employment Creation and Poverty Alleviation" agreed
to create an inter-agency forum responsible for exploring priorities and
strategies for using infrastructure development to create employment and
alleviate poverty in Indonesia.
- Continue to provide assistance in developing a country strategy for
sustainable rural infrastructure development. ASIST AP has assisted
KIMPRASWIL in preparing a draft strategy paper. This strategy needs to be
further developed into a country strategy for sustainable rural
infrastructure development.
- Assist the Rural Infrastructure Coordination Forum in developing its
agenda for coordinating activities and in the development of a data base and
information center on sustainable rural infrastructure. The Forum, once
established, will meet regularly and ASIST AP will continue to provide
technical support to it. ASIST AP will also support the Government through
the Forum in identifying investment opportunities where sustainable rural
infrastructure development procedures and technologies could be integrated.
- A key concern of ILO's decent work programme is the working and living
conditions of the labour force. In line with the policy to reduce the decent
work deficit, ASIST AP will study the options how it could contribute more
to improve the working conditions in the rural infrastructure sectors. The
first step will be to assess the actual situation with regard the relevant
labour policies and practices. A follow-up activity would be a set of
recommendations for addressing decent work deficits.
- Seek funding from the bilateral donors to develop and implement
small-scale demonstration projects which will provide meat to the policy on
sustainable rural infrastructure development. An important activity here is
the sourcing of funding to replicate the IRAP demonstration activities in
other areas.
- Explore options to integrate the sustainable rural infrastructure
development procedures and technologies in major donor supported investment
programmes. To this effect, ASIST AP will seek to closely collaborate with
the main investment donors in Indonesia (World Bank, ADB and Japan). In
doing this it will add value to their programmes and support the donors in
reaching their objectives of poverty alleviation and employment creation.
- Develop guidelines, manuals and training materials on local level access
planning, labour-based technology, small-scale contracting and rural
infrastructure maintenance tailored to the Indonesian situation and in
Bahasa Indonesia.
- Develop a pool of local expertise to support the further development of
sustainable rural infrastructure procedures and sustain the work that has
started after the ASIST AP technical assistance phases out. This will
include continue working with the Universities, local consultants and
central and local government technicians.
IRAP Demonstration Project
The Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta collaborates with the ILO/ASIST-AP
programme in a project that will test and demonstate the effects of the
application of a local level planning tool called Integrated Rural Accessibility
Planning (IRAP).
In 1996, research was done after the process and implementation of IRAP in
Indonesia, through some demonstration projects. A main finding from these
preliminary activities was that IRAP is indeed an important potential planning
tool for improving rural infrastructure in Indonesia. However it was also
concluded that in its format at that time it was deemed unlikely that IRAP could
be adopted as a new rural planning tool in Indonesia since the state was still
too centrally organized and an officially approved participatory rural
development planning process already existed. This all changed with the new
decentralization act which became effective on January 1, 2001.
Local Governance
Indonesia is embarking on a process of decentralization. As a direct result, the
Kabupaten (district) Governments have been entrusted with more responsibilities
in the fields of amongst others infrastructure development, human resource
development and socio-economic development. The budgets of, for instance, the
Kabupaten Bantul and Kutai have almost doubled compared to last year. An
immediate need has emerged at the Kecamatan (sub-district) and Desa (commune)
level for developing a capacity in, particularly, infrastructure planning.
The Gadjah Mada University and ILO/ASIST-AP took this opportunity to assist
the Government in the decentralization efforts. And by strengthening the
capacity at local level to identify, design, implement and maintain
infrastructure priorities, knowledge will be gained about the structure,
functioning and responsibilities of local Governments that will be usefull for
the replication of IRAP in other parts of Indonesia.
The project set-up
The main objective of this project is to demonstrate and test the use of IRAP
procedures in two pilot districts, Bantul in Yogyakarta (Central Java) and Kutai
in East Kalimantan (Borneo). The experiences and outputs will be used to develop
guidelines and training materials that are specific for Indonesia. Mr. Roberto
Akuwen, an offical of the Muluka BAPPENAS has been detached as the national
coordinator of these activities.
On 16 October the set-up of the demonstration project was discussed with
senior local government officials of Bantul. It was agreed to do two try-outs
with varying set-ups in each distict. In the Bantul District the IRAP
methodology would be implemented in 2 Kecamatans. The IRAP team would work in
collaboration with counterparts from the Kabupaten. In Kutai the IRAP
methodology would be implemented in 4 Desas (comprises a number of villages
called Dusun) in 2 Kecamatans.
For the process of further refinement of the IRAP methodology in Indonesia, it
will be essential that the Kutai activities and Bantul activities will be
complementary. Only then we could use the experiences at Dusun, Desa, Kecamatan
and Kabupaten level to develop a local level planning process tailored to the
Indonesian situation and prepare guidelines and training materials. Therefore,
similar procedures will be used for data collection, mapping and infrastructure
inventory. Only the analysis of information and prioritization will take place
at a different levels and will be slightly different in set-up.
Finally, the experiences at Dusun, Desa, Kecamatan and Kabupaten level will be
used to refine a local level planning process that is tailored to the Indonesian
situation and prepare specific guidelines and training materials.
Kutai
Kutai is a relatively undeveloped district but with abundant financial
resources. The presence of oil and a consequent increased share in national
revenues under the new financial decentralization laws have provided Kutai with
new opportunities to develop its communities. A rough calculation shows that
Kutai's annual budget is now over USD 100 million. The local Government has
decided to allocate about USD 100,000 to each of its Desas. These funds should
be allocated for infrastructure development (30%), human resource development
and socio-economic development. Local capacity in Kutai seems to be a main
bottleneck for future development.
The IRAP team was requested to work at Desa level and develop a capacity at
Desa level for identifying, designing, implementing and maintaining rural
infrastructure projects. This would be done in collaboration with counterparts
from also the Kecamatan and Kabupaten level, to ensure that capacity for
replication at the next higher levels is also established.
Bantul
A major concern in Bantul is the present size of the Kabupaten road network. The
responsability for the 950km will be reduced to 650 km by the tranfer of
responsabilities for 300 km of roads to the Desas. Bantul will be assisted in
defining the process by which to prioritize roads and building capacity at Desa
level for maintenance planning.
During a meeting on 17 October with the mayor of Bantul, he expressed his
deepest interest in the approach, and suggested to present the initial outputs
during the annual local Government meeting in Jakarta in mid-2002. As a regional
representative he could ask for a time allocation during this seminar to explain
in detail the effects and challenges of the excercise. The mayor sees IRAP as an
important tool in the decentralization/democratization process he is developing
in Bantul. He seeks to increase the responsibilities and resources of the
Kecamatans. Local capacity to plan and implement project is a sine-qua-non in
this process.
Training
A series of orientation workshops and training was conducted during the last
quarter of 2001 to introduce IRAP to local counterpart staff and train them in
data-collection, road inventory, and mapping activities. A regional workshop was
held in early March 2002 to introduce procedures for priorisation. This workshop
was attended by a number of representatives from other Kabupaten that have shown
interest in the approach.
Next ...
In the next few months the staff will work with the local governments to
complete the data analysis and identify infrastructure priorities. The IRAP
demonstration activities at local government level are planned to be completed
before the end of June 2002 in order for the priorities to be considered for
Government funding. Annual budgets are discussed and presented to the local
legislatures towards the end of May each year.
Developments at Macro Level
As indicated under point 1 of the country strategy, ASIST-AP supports the
establishment of a Rural Infrastructure Coordination Forum. For this reason two
workshops were organised on the role of Rural Infrastructure Developement in
employment creation and poverty alleviation.
The first workshop
In November 2001, ILO conducted a National Level Workshop on Labour-based
Technology to explore priorities and strategies for using infrastructure
development to create employment and alleviate poverty in Indonesia. The
Workshop identified areas for ILO's assistance to assist at the national level
in developing strategies and programmes for resource-intensive public works and
to assist the national agencies in the transfer of certain responsibilities to
the local governments. This was done in the context of the 4 technical fields:
local level access planning, labour-based technology, small contracting and
local level maintenance systems. A similar follow-up exercise was conducted at
Kabupaten and Kecamatan level in 5 provinces: West Papua, Southeast Sulawesi,
east kalimantan, west Java and South Sumatra.
The second workshop
A second workshop titled "High-level Consultation Meeting on Rural
Infrastructure Development in the context of Employment Creation and Poverty
Alleviation" was held in Jakarta on February 15 2002 to review the work
done earlier on strategy development and the results of the different
stakeholder's workshops at national and local level. Over 50 senior government
officials representing 15 ministries attended the meeting. The meeting agreed on
the following agenda for follow-up work: Establishment of a rural infrastructure
coordination forum which meets on a regular basis;
The development of i) a data base and information center; ii) a policy and
institutional framework for rural infrastructure development; iii) a country
strategy for rural infrastructure development and iv) an implementation scheme,
through integrated demonstration projects;
Technical assistance for i) developing central and local policies, strategies
and regulations for infrastructure development and financing; ii) integrated
planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and developing standards,
guidelines and manuals for infrastructure development;
Training for Government officials and private sector;
The development of an investment plan for rural infrastructure development.
Next ...
The workshop is part of an ongoing process. An immediate follow-up priority now
is to establish the rural infrastructure forum which will refine the agenda and
develop a plan of action. ILO ASIST-AP has been assisting the Government of
Indonesia with the earlier work in relation to the draft strategy for rural
infrastructure development which seeks to optimize the employment effect and
maximize the impact on poverty alleviation. The Coordinating Ministry of
Economic Affairs which has taken a lead role in further developing the strategy
and related programme has asked ILO ASIST-AP to provide further guidance and
assistance in the further development of the strategy, demonstration projects
and other follow-up.
Further reading
- Poverty Strategy Document Indonesia - PDF 640 Kb
ASIST-AP 2001
- Perspectives on Rural Infrastructure Development: Workshop findings,
Identifying the Needs and Priorities of Local Governments - PDF 293 Kb
Danang Parikesit,
ILO Consultant, January 2002
- Perspectives on Rural Infrastructure Development: Workshop findings, Role
of the Central Government in the decentralization process of rural
infrastructure development - PDF 326 Kb
Mary Braithwaite, ILO Consultant, December 2001
- The Yogyakarta Initiative: The Role of Rural Transport in Supporting Local
Social and Economic Developement
Danang Parikesit, ILO Consultant, January 2002
- Technical Manual on Labour-based Road Construction Methods (Pedoman
Teknis) - PDF 4,354 Kb
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