More efforts needed to reign in growing population

(News Terupdate) - The days of catchy family planning (KB) advertisements have long gone. One of the most memorable TV commercials from 1980s and 1990s was the KB “Ya ya ya” ad.

The commercial showed a woman turning down her partner each time he suggested having sex, but after using contraception she said: “Ya ya ya” with a wink.

That was under the New Order regime, when Soeharto still ruled Indonesia with an iron fist, deploying 35,000 family planning officers across the country and military forces to coerce the masses into using birth control.

These days, with decentralization, KB campaigns for a family of two children are less prominent. The remnants of the robust campaign however, are still evident. According to the National Family Planning Coordinator Board (BKKBN), Indonesia’s fertility rate remained at 2.6 between 2002 and 2007.

Indonesia’s population experienced a five-fold increase from 40.2 million in 1900 to 205.8 million in 2000.

Head of BKKBN Sugiri Syarief however said that for Indonesia to avoid over-population problems in the future, the fertility rate would have to come down further.

“That shows the KB program is stagnant. We need the fertility rate to go down to 2.1,” he said in his office recently.

“Our program is currently running, but has failed to reduce the country’s fertility rate,” he said.
Before 2002, he said the fertility rate had been continuously declining. In 1967-1970, the fertility rate was 5.6.

Jakarta has reached the target, with the city’s fertility rate standing at 2.1, down from 2.2 in 2002. The head of the Jakarta Family Planning and Women and Community Empowerment Body (BPMPKB), Tuty Mulyati, said the 2.1 fertility rate meant the average family in Jakarta had two children, with a few having more.

However, even with Jakarta having an ideal fertility rate, it still common to see large families in the streets.

Tending her soto (chicken soup) cart at Palmerah Market, Hamidah, 39, is still actively working despite being nine-month pregnant with her fourth child.

“I wanted four kids, so it would be two and two,” she says.

Hamidah says she has never met a family planning staff and decided to use contraception on her own. “I went to the midwife on my own will and asked for birth control, so there would be gaps between pregnancies.”

Her eldest, a 19-year-old, only just finished junior high school and is now selling coffee at the Bina Nusantara Campus in Rawabelong. “My second child is a girl, she’s 12, and the third one’s a boy, he’s six.”

She adds that many of her neighbors in Cipulir have four and even six children per family. “There are many children there,” she says.

She wants her daughter, now in elementary school, to go to university. “She’s quite smart that one. She always finishes first in class.”

Sugiri explained that a change of government, policies and priorities had transformed the family program planning nationwide.

After the reform era and regional autonomy in 2002, the infrastructure supporting the family planning program changed.

“The BKKBN used to be a top-down command and control organization [therefore was able to impose directives on regions]. Now each region has the authority to implement the family planning program.

What we [BKKBN] do now is advocacy so that regencies and cities carry out the KB programs,” Sugiri said.

Before the reform era, regencies and cities were given budgets for the family planning program. “Now cities and regencies allocate the amount of budget needed for the family planning program themselves,” he said.

Many regions have limited budgets for the family planning program, he said. The number of the field staff has also dropped from 35,000 before the reform era, to 19,000 in 2003.

In 2003, a year after regional autonomy was implemented, only 30 percent of the total regencies and cities in Indonesia had a body for family planning.

“Little has been achieved since,” he said.

Indonesia’s population grew by 1.7 percent between 1990 and 2000. “Our target now is 1.3 percent. But we won’t know [if we’ve reached that target] until we carry out the nationwide census in May,” he said.

A successful family planning program is crucial to address problems of poverty and maternal death plaguing the country. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Sugiri said, revamped the family program and prioritized it on the government’s agenda in 2007.

Sugiri likens this heavy task to building a structure from debris.

Yudhoyono released a decree in 2007 ordering cities and regencies to establish a family planning body.

“Family planning agencies started emerging. Now, 90 percent of regencies and cities have them,” Sugiri said. The number of field workers has shot up again, from 19,000 in 2003, to 24,000.

“It’s still not enough though,” Sugiri said. “We need 35,000 field workers, with one field worker for every two villages,” he said.

Head of University of Indonesia’s Demography Institute, Sonny Harry Harmadi, argued the government should show more political will. “They have revamped the program, but it isn’t enough,” he said.

He compared the current Cabinet to the New Order one. “We used to have a state minister for population. We don’t have that now and that shows the political will [of the government] is not as strong,” he said.

The small budget set aside for population control reflected the government’s lack of political will, Sonny added.

Sugiri concurred the government funding allocated to the program — Rp 1.7 trillion — was limited. “If we wanted the funding to match the level allocated in 80s and 90s, we would need Rp 3.5 to 4 trillion,”
he said.

A few years back, opposition from religion-based parties also hampered the implementation of the program. “There was some opposition back then. But not in this [presidential] term,” Sugiri said, adding that some public figures still supported polygamy and had many children.

He said the rate of unmet needs, or people wanting to join birth control programs who couldn’t because of limited access to contraception, had risen from 8.6 percent in 2002 to 9.1 percent in 2007.
“That means a lot of people actually want access to birth control. We need to improve our service to reach those people,” he said.

According to Sugiri, 61.4 percent of Indonesian couples of childbearing age have taken part in the family planning program. To curb Indonesia’s fertility rate to 2.1 by 2015, the number of Indonesia couples of childbearing age taking part in the family planning program must reach 68.7 percent.

“If we fulfill that need by giving people better access to contraception, we will reach our target. We don’t need to woo people, they are already aware of family planning.”

Posted in: Indonesia News