Desy Nurhayati, Jakarta – A number of NGOs focused on development affairs criticized on Tuesday various regional administrations for neglecting Indonesians' basic rights, citing a failure to prioritize budgets for health and education sectors.

The NGOs include Oxfam, JARI Indonesia and the Anti-poverty Movement of the Indonesian people. The groups launched their monitoring report based on regional budgets, especially around health and education allocations.

Research for the report was conducted in 20 regencies and 10 municipalities across the islands of Sumatra, Java, Indonesia's part of Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Nusa Tenggara.

The report shows although some regions had allocated more than 20 percent of their budget for the sector, as obliged by the 1945 Constitution, money was not prioritized for items that directly impacted residents.

On health, most of the regional administrations had yet to allocate adequate budgets. Between 2 and 8 percent was being spent on health, which is far lower than the World Health Organization's standard of 15 percent.

"If the regional administrations want to seriously prioritize the two sectors, they should also ensure all programs be implemented properly by the sectors' agencies so as to meet the people's needs," Faizal Riza, one of the researchers, said.

"But in fact, they just let irregularities occur and do nothing to guarantee the programs are carried out," he said. "From the report, we also found that many administrations have no long-term development plans and their budgets lack transparency and accountability."

But the NGOs said in their report the central government had been consistent within their agenda to give the education sector the lion's share of state budget. They also lauded the government for increasing their budget for health and poverty alleviation.

But Henri Saparini of Indonesia Bangkit said, "Why does the number of poor people in the country increase, while the budget for poverty alleviation has been increased year by year?" "We should not only scrutinize the amount of the budget, but also monitor whether the money goes to the right targets," she said.

The allocation for poverty alleviation has been gradually increased from Rp 23 trillion (US$2.4 billion) in 2005 to Rp 51 trillion in 2006, and to Rp 79 trillion this year.

Faizal said the central government and regional administrations should improve their coordination in drafting national and regional development plans to avoid overlapping programs.

The NGOs also criticized the annual report on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), recently launched by the government, for being incomprehensive, unreliable and unable to reveal the government's failure to achieve the goals.

They said the government's optimistic report on its MDGs contradicted a report from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific (UNESCAP), which put Indonesia among the 10 Asia-Pacific countries that may fail to meet their MDGs.