Anita Rachman – Nine years after Indonesia took up the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, the country still had a long way to go in proving its commitment to achieving the targets, especially in the areas of health, poverty eradication and the environment, a representative of a nongovernmental group said on Tuesday.

Yuna Farhan, secretary general of the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency, or Fitra, said that the country's annual budget increases had not seen more funds allocated for those three areas.

"The government has shown little attention to the MDGs, especially on health, poverty and environmental issues," he said at a press briefing with representatives of several NGOs, including the Association for Community Empowerment and the Indonesian Women's Coalition for Justice and Democracy.

The MDGs were included in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which was signed by 189 heads of state and affirmed at a summit in 2005.

Indonesia has only six years left to achieve the eight targets of the program: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and empowering women, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; ensuring environmental sustainability; and establishing a global partnership for development.

The group of NGOs evaluated the government's work over the past five years and only found improvements in the education sector and in child mortality. "There has been no significant decrease in the poverty rate, in spite of the fact that the government has tripled the budget since 2005," Yuna said.

Data from Fitra shows that in 2005 the budget set aside Rp 23 trillion ($1.94 billion) for poverty reduction. "And we have Rp 66.2 trillion this year," Yuna added. But he said that between 2005, when the government affirmed the goals, and 2008, the poverty rate only fell 1 percent.

Yuna also said that the government had never paid special attention to the health sector. Though the nation's health services are plagued with problems, from 2005-09 the government never allocated more than 2.5 percent of its total annual budget to health spending. The same was true for environmental issues like sanitation and forest conservation, Yuna said.

Titik Hartini, executive director of the Association for Community Empowerment, said that the government needed to work harder in order to achieve the MDGs and prove its commitments. She said that it would be difficult indeed for the government to meet the targets on its current trajectory.

"Now our hopes rest on the new legislators," she said. "That is why we hope people will vote for those candidates who are committed to the MDGs."

The group said most parties nowadays only emphasized poverty eradication and education, with few touching on health and environmental issues.