KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND COMMITMENT OF PARLEMENTARIANS IN THREE PROVINCES OF INDONESIA.

ABSTRACT

During the decentralization era, which was started in 2001, the role of parliamentarians at all levels ; national, province, and district/city is much more important than before.

The power shifted from the government to the parliament. The parliament’s function on legislation, budgeting, and controlling are becoming powerful, Therefore, it is necessary to advocate the members of parliaments ; their concern and commitment on population and reproductive health related issues are needed.

This action research aims at assesing and promoting knowledge, awareness, opinions and actions of individual member of parliament, proving them with additional information, and motivating them about their involvement in population and reproductive health issues. The Interviewed member came from regions south sumatra, west kalimantan anda East Nusa Tenggara. These regions have different characteristics, the majority of parliamentarians have education after high school : from academy to PhD degree, Age of the members is relatively old. Also, almost all of them have family with number of children around two to four.

The Religions of the  inteviewed members are depending on the regions because one of the regions is dominated by Non Muslims.

Because of the different characteristics on the regions, relationship between member’s charateristic, and population and reproductive issues are difficult to be obtained, But in general education and religions are not clearly related to the knowledge, attitude and commitment to of province’s parliamentarians. Futhermore, the result on aggregate levely analysis and provinvial level analysis are relatively similar.

The awereness of the members about population and reproductive health issues is considerably high, although there are some issues with relatively low awerenes, The awareness of the member on prevalance of the issues on their regions is lover than their general awareness, but is is still considerable higher.
One concern is about low knowledge of the member on law concerning population and reproductive health, This is simple, yet important matter to the decision making process, Other concern is related to sensitive and relatively new issues, namely safe abortion and adolescent reproductive health service. Both of the concerns are repeatedly become concerns is every section and every province, Therefore, some of these issues have to be treated with causion.
The commitment of the interviewed member is usually divided in to two, supporting a law draft and conducting discussion, there are indicators that if the members of supporting a law draft, they agree with the policies, But , if the members choose to conduct discussion, they are still ambiguous, or maybe reject, with the policies. Also, they still feel reluctant to do some measure that need more resources and skill. This conditions may come from the members lack of experience on the power that given to them. But in general, the members agree to something about issues on population and reproductive health.

Futher researches have to be made in order to have better understanding to knowledge, attitude and commitment on population and reproductive health, Also new approaches have to be created to deliver information to the members effectively.