The Head of the Demography Institute of the Faculty of Economy and Business, (FEB) Dr. Abdillah Ahsan, emphasised the importance of cross-sector collaboration in facing the mahy challenges present during the current post-Covid period, in an address made during the Megapolitan Demography Forum. The challenges include a rise in unemployment, inequality in access to health, inequality in access to technology in the educational sector, and disruption of technology — the last of which poses a threat to the labour force.
The Megapolitan Demography Forum is part of a webinar titled “Demographical Dynamics in the Post-Pandemic Era and Attempts towards Recovery”, held by the Demography Institute in order to find solutions to aforesaid problems. The Webinar, held on Monday (18/4), presented contributors from the Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas), National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN), the Directorate-General for Demography and Civil Registration (Ditjen Dukcapil), and the Regional Planning, Development, and Research Agencies for the provinces of West Java, DKI Jakarta, and Banten.
BKKBN data reveals the most urgent post-pandemic issue society has to face: lack of healthcare access. The eastern regions of Indonesia has seen restrictions to the access to healthcare and family planning facilities. All of these has led to an increase in unwanted pregnancies, illegal abortions, maternal and natal mortality rates, and stunting.
“In order to face these problems, BKKBN involves partners from many quarters, such as the Army and obstetricians, in order to boost the once-stagnated family planning services and improve various healthcare facilities,” Dr. Ir. Dwi Listyawardani, M.Sc., Dip.Com., the Acting Deputy of the Section for Population Control, BKKBN, explained.
Another sort of measure that has been undertaken towards facilitating access to civil administration services is the simultaneous augmentation of technology use in the field. This may comprise moves such as installing automatic demographic and civil registration (Dukcapil) service machines and making use of the official website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in monitoring civil registration data. Both have been implemented in the verification of social relief and subsidy data.
Besides the aforementioned problems and issues, Covid-19 has also impacted the quality of human resources — evidenced by an increase in the amount of people classed as Poor and Vulnerable to Poverty, a decrease in the ability, especially by those working in the informal sectors, to obtain social security collectability, and an increase in open unemployment rates among senior high and vocational school graduates.
Chaeruniza Fitriyani, S.Sos, MSP, The Vice-Deputy of the Sector for Demography and Workforce, Bappenas, stated that the quality of human resources is the key towards a demographic bonus. A rise in the quality of human resoruces may be achieved in the participation of industries in the development of vocational training and an expansion of the job market which responds to technological developments. Also contributing to the betterment of Indonesia’s human resources are investments in human resources coupled with the development of a pension system and long-term financial products, and the enhancement of healthcare security and the improvement of nutrition.
Three megapolitan provinces — West Java, Banten, and DKI Jakarta — have not been left unscathed by these problems. Several measures have been taken to address them, including the bolstering of civil registry databases, the improvement of the competence and competitiveness of employee candidates by Banten Regional Development Planning Agency (Bappeda Banten); the drafting of a list of ten development priorities over the course of a year (2022 to 2023) by the Government of the Province of West Java, and the optimalisation of the digital ecosystem through the creation of jobs in the creative economy sector by Bappeda DKI Jakarta .
At the end of the discussion, Dr. Abdillah expressed his hopes that the Megapolitan Demography Forum would jumpstart the participation of many more stakeholders in synergical policy-making processes so that current challenges may be properly resolved. “The Demography Institute, FEB UI is ready to contribute in the development of demographic policies in provincial goverments and those of districts and towns.”
