Heaptalk, Serang — On Monday, (08/01), President of Republic Indonesia, Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo underlined the importance of managing village funds as something that could provide benefits to the villagers. That statement was delivered by Jokowi in his meeting with all village headmen of the Serang Regency in Margagiri Village, Serang Regency, Banten Province.
“I hope the funds that were given to the villages could really become something beneficial for the village in terms of increasing the productivity there,” said Jokowi.
Furthermore, Jokowi explained that to this day there are several infrastructures built that benefit the usage of village funds distributed by the government. One of the benefits is the construction of village roads that have reached 350 thousand kilometers.
“That means each village got approximately four kilometers, because there are 75 thousand villages, that’s 350 divided into approximately four to five kilometers per village. This is a good result. In addition, there is also a bridge that has been built. According to my record, the data showed that the bridge was built for 1,900 kilometers. And this must continue to keep increasing,” said Jokowi.
Jokowi also stated the construction of village roads for 350 thousand kilometers was also a real evidence of the government not only constructing big infrastructures. According to him, the number of village roads built now is much longer compared to the toll roads across the country.
“So, it will be widely understood. Don’t presume that attention is exclusively given to important matters. In reality, a substantial focus is directed towards smaller issues, take the construction of 350,000 kilometers of village roads and the establishment of 14,600 village markets as the example,” he added.
“Then there are also retention basins (embung) for rain supply, there are already 6,700 retention basins built from village funds, this is also not a small amount,” he continued.
Therefore, Jokowi appealed to all village headmen to plan a good infrastructure development, such as through the preparation of building designs. Jokowi mentioned, the central government through the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) will be ready to assist the village government in preparing the plan.
Editorial team: Wulan Dari, Prazna Alyfia Ghefira
