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Kupang. The Indonesian government’s callous disregard for the welfare of former East Timor residents who pledged allegiance to Jakarta has left them mired in poverty, according to a regional lawmaker from East Nusa Tenggara.

Sarah Lerry Mboeik, a member of the Regional Representatives Council, said during a visit to the border with East Timor that refugees still in Indonesia were living in dire conditions.

“The reality on the ground here is that there is very limited access to education, most residents live in poverty and the social welfare system is nonexistent,” she said.

“These kinds of conditions are taking a severe psychological toll on the residents.”

Sarah also said most children were forgoing school to help their parents earn more money by selling vegetables or newspapers on the street.

Should this continue, she warned, the prospects of achieving the UN-mandated Millennium Development Goals on eradicating poverty and implementing universal primary education would be very bleak.

Sarah called on the central government to roll out major construction projects for roads and bridges in the border districts of Belu, North Central Timor and Kupang, in order to create jobs and help boost development in the area.

“The central government can’t expect the respective local administrations to pick up the tab for development projects here because their budgets are very limited,” Sarah said.

“Besides, this being a border area, the central government should take the lead here.”

She called for the creation of a special fund to address development issues and proposed establishing a ministry specifically to oversee it.

Sarah also warned that should the central government persist in ignoring the lack of development in the area or the plight of the refugees, they might eventually consider moving back across the border and becoming citizens of East Timor.

She said the possibility was not without precedent, pointing out that more than 2,000 Indonesians living in the border area between West Kalimantan and Malaysia had opted to become Malaysian citizens over the past few years.

East Nusa Tenggara administration official Yoseph Aman Mamulak has said the government program to shelter Timorese seeking refuge in the province following the 1999 independence referendum had officially ended in 2005.

He said the provincial administration was having difficulty providing housing and land for the refugees.

Mamulak said that in February, the government had handed over 1,000 homes to Timorese families, in addition to the 8,000 built since 2007.

He said the government had initially planned to build only 5,000 houses for refugees in the four districts of Belu, Kupang, North Central Timor and South Central Timor.