REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The government plans to resettle four million people during the next five years under a transmigration program that would create new employment and villages in the country.

The program was proposed following the establishment of the North Kalimantan and West Sulawesi provinces.

Commenting on the issue in a press statement on Saturday, the Minister of Rural, Backward Village and Transmigration Affairs, Marwan Jafar, urged governors, district heads and city mayors, whose regions have the potential to send people to participate in the resettlement program to take pro-active steps to encourage people to join it.

Marwan said efforts to promote the program made by regional governments would be strategic as the transmigration program had lost its allure since the reform movement.

The minister however believed that an interest in transmigration was still high due to the growing difficulties in getting access to agricultural land.

In view of this, he hoped that the heads of regional governments whose regions had become transmigration destinations, would extend support to the program by preparing the land for it.

"The criteria for determining land suitable for the program must be cleanliness and it being environmentally fit for resettlement, business and development," he said.

Marwan said transmigration was also part of the efforts to accelerate development of backward regions, especially in the border villages.

"The transmigration programs in several backward villages and villages along the border could help improve basic health infrastructure development, education, clean water and electricity facilities in 70 to 80 backward regions in 122 targeted districts during the 2015 to 2019 mid-term development plan," he said.

Minister Marwan believed the transmigration program would help overcome national food problems as long as all resource potential was optimized to support the government's food self-sufficiency program.

"The transmigration program could offer a concrete solution for national food problems. If we are given a mandate, we should be ready to make transmigration areas centers of national food production," he said.

Marwan also believes that many farming families in Java are interested in participating in the transmigration program because many of them have no land to farm and have so far only been able to work as farmers.

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