Budget slashed for Indonesia’s rescue agency despite disaster surge

By Ananda Teresia

JAKARTA, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s main rescue agency had its funding cut by a parliamentary panel on Wednesday as part of a plan to divert government expenditure to other programmes, despite concerns over the number of disasters the agency has to deal with.   

Ministries and agencies have been ordered to cut budgets to make room for areas that President Prabowo Subianto has prioritised, such as his flagship free meals programmes and higher defence spending.  

The parliamentary panel approved a 69.38 billion rupiah ($4.15 million) – or 4.5% – reduction in rescue agency Basarnas’ budget from 1.55 trillion rupiah in the initial allocation to 1.48 trillion rupiah, commission head Lasarus said during a meeting.

Indonesia sits on the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, an area of high seismic activity atop multiple tectonic plates, making it susceptible to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. 

In January alone, the sprawling archipelago was hit by floods and landslides. At least 34 people were killed in landslides in West Java province over the weekend, and the rescue agency is rushing to see if it can rescue 32 others who are missing. 

Cyclone-induced floods and landslides on the island of Sumatra late last year killed 1,200 people and displaced over one million residents.

The cuts in the rescue agency’s budget were proposed by the Finance Ministry and required approval from the parliamentary panel. 

The agency’s head Mohammad Syafii, who attended the meeting, accepted the decision but said many improvements were needed to optimise his agency’s functions and ability to respond quickly.

For example, he said all regions should have their own local office of the rescue agency given the frequent natural disasters in the country.

There are 514 regions in Indonesia. Currently the agency has 38 offices – one in each province. 

The committee acknowledged that a series of natural disasters had struck Indonesia last year and the agency required more funds, but went ahead with the cut anyway.   

“The work of Basarnas has been outstanding but their capacity to handle the problems will be limited if the budget is not sufficient,” the committee’s deputy head Ridwan Bae said.

($1 = 16,700.0000 rupiah)

(Reporting by Ananda Teresia; Editing by Gibran Peshimam and Raju Gopalakrishnan)