Lerry Rumbiak | Papuan Student (28 Oktober 2021)
The Minister of Home Affairs (Mendagri) Tito Karnavian revealed the risks if the special autonomy funds for Papua and West Papua were stopped. According to him, the Papua and West Papua Regional Revenue and Expenditure Budgets (APBD) will fall if the policy is taken.
The reason is, most of the regional treasury of the two provinces comes from the special autonomy fund. For West Papua, for example, the portion of the special autonomy fund for the APBD reached 52.68 percent. While in West Papua the portion reached 63.7 percent.
Tito also said that the Special Autonomy Fund for Papua and West Papua was proposed to increase from 2 percent to 2.25 percent of the national DAU starting next year. The estimation of the Special Autonomy Fund for Papua and West Papua has assumed the DAU to increase by 3 percent every year.
However, he conveyed a number of notes regarding the use of Otsus funds in the two provinces. First, it has not had a major impact on development.
Second, the distribution to regencies/cities is still lower than nominal. Third, there is still a high remaining calculation for the use of the Special Autonomy Fund and additional infrastructure funds for the two provinces.
Previously, the Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu) noted that the special autonomy funds (Otsus) and additional infrastructure funds (DTI) that had been disbursed to Papua and West Papua reached Rp138.65 trillion since 2002 until now.
Not only that, the amount of transfers to regions and village funds (TKDD) disbursed is also quite large, namely IDR 702.3 trillion during 2005-2021. Then ministry/institutional spending allocated for Papua and West Papua in the same period reached Rp251.29 trillion.
Meanwhile, support for the increase in Otsus funds was also conveyed by an observer of the bureaucracy and public services, Varhan Abdul Azis. He said that the government’s background in extending the Papua Special Autonomy (Otsus) fund was none other than a sincere desire to continue to improve the welfare of the citizens of the Earth of Cendrawasih. It is this good intention that has become the background for the disbursement of funds of up to no less than Rp1,000 trillion to date.
DAU is a APBN (State Budget) fund that is allocated by the central government to each autonomous region in Indonesia every year. According to Varhan, the continuation and the raising of the Papua DAU clearly emphasizes the central government’s concern for the fate of the Papuan people.
“The fact that the government has given one thousand trillion funds clearly explains the central government’s concern for the welfare of the Papuan people”
According to Varhan, who is also the Executive Secretary of the Indonesia Bureaucracy and Service Watch, when examined more closely, the central government’s concern for Papuans is even higher than the government’s concern for other regions in Indonesia. He said that the funding for Papua was even greater when compared to other regions which had relatively similar criteria and conditions.
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