West Java's vasectomy-for-aid plan lacks legitimacy: Minister

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment Muhaimin Iskandar affirmed that regional governments wield no authority to unilaterally formulate and implement rules that impose conditions on access to public social assistance.

Iskandar made the statement in response to a proposal from West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi, who plans to require husbands to undergo vasectomy or sterilization as a prerequisite for receiving provincial government assistance, including scholarships and social aid.

“They cannot make their own rules,” Iskandar told the media at the Parliamentary Complex in Jakarta on Saturday.

He emphasized that the central government has never made participation in the national family planning movement, which promotes a two-child policy, a condition for receiving public assistance.

"No, there is no such requirement," the minister affirmed.

Governor Mulyadi has drawn public attention for his plan to link eligibility for various forms of social assistance to participation in family planning programs, particularly those involving male contraceptive methods, such as vasectomy.

Speaking in Bandung on Monday (April 28), he explained that the plan aims to drive more equitable aid distribution, preventing it from being concentrated among a limited number of individuals or families.

To support this, the governor stressed the importance of integrating social assistance recipient data with population data, including records of family planning participation.

"The plan is to check the eligibility of prospective aid beneficiaries. If they are participants in family planning, they may get assistance. If not, they should first adopt birth control measures, particularly male methods. I mean it," he remarked.

Mulyadi's plan has also drawn criticism from the Chairperson of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), Atnike Nova Sigiro, who asserted that requiring vasectomies in exchange for public aid constitutes a human rights violation.

“This is also a matter of privacy since decisions about one's body, including whether to have a vasectomy, are human rights. Therefore, it should not be exchanged for social aid or other benefits,” she stated at her office on Friday (May 2).