Warna Warni Bali |

Ni Komang Erviani ,  CONTRIBUTOR ,  THE JAKARTA POST, KARANGASEM   |  Tue, 01/20/2009 5:04 PM  |  Bali

Ketut Gatepan lives with his two wives and one daughter in a small 12-square-meter shack.

To get to his house, he must climb a rocky, narrow road that his fellow residents of Pucang hamlet in the village of Ban in Karangasem regency use as their daily route.

There are no rooms in his simple house made of bamboo walls and an asbestos roof. In the one interior space the family cooks, sleeps and eats.

The family has no electricity in the house nor a toilet. To take care of business, they go around big, dig a small hole then cover the hole with dirt when they are done. “We sleep together, the four of us right here,” said Gatepan, who sustains his family by growing corn and raising cattle. “We’re used to this kind of life. We’ve all been living like this since we were kids.”

Gatepan is just one among the thousands of Bali’s poor families, most of whom live in Karangasem, a regency known for prolonged drought. families live mostly in the districts of Kubu, Abang and Karangasem,” said Regent I Wayan Geredeg.

Geredeg said his regency’s arid conditions was the main cause of Karangasem’s high poverty rate. In a recent census 40,272 of the 91,000 families living in Karangasem were categorized as living below the poverty line: 3,300 met the criteria for extremely poor, 17,000 were categorized as poor and the rest as nearly poor.

“It’s the extremely poor families who are in the most dire need of attention because they generally live in inadequate homes,” he said.

The government has been trying to plug the poverty hole with initiatives that would guarantee a supply of clean water and improve infrastructure in the regency.

Karangasem has received financing to fix 40 homes already in a venture that began mid-January in the villages of Muntigunung and West Tianyar in Kubu district.

“We spend about Rp 10 million for each home,” Geredeg said.

The Bali administration has also planned a Rp 3 billion home makeover program for 300 houses in the island, also putting approximately Rp 10 million in repairs into each house.

Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika said the Karangasem regency will receive the bulk of the money,the highest rate of poverty is here.

“In the future we hope, at least, that no homes will still have only dirt floors. Homes should at least have cement floors and brick walls,” he said.

But the amount of current funding is nothing compared with the number of poor people in Bali.

According to the Bali Center for Statistics, 147,044 poor families reside in the province, the largest concentration being in the regencies of Karangasem, Buleleng and Bangli.

In response to the stark contrast comparing these areas to the private wealth in others, Pastika urged the private sector to help with improving homes of low-income residents.

“I wish one company wouldone of these villages, so not only could they help with the home makeover, they could also solve the water crisis and improve infrastructure.”

Whether Pastika’s wish will come true remains to be seen. But for Karangasem residents, they will take whatever they can get.

“We would be happy to have this home makeover program in our village,” said Ketut Karta, village head in Ban