Government Policy Communication in Poverty Alleviation in the City of Makassar

Abstract

One of the economic development policies in a country is based on the accelerated pace of poverty alleviation in society, which is increasingly becoming a problem for the government The poverty rate in Makassar City is relatively high, so it is very important for the government to optimize policy communication by the government in poverty alleviation. The purpose of this study was to determine the process of communication on government policies in poverty alleviation in Makassar City. This research uses a qualitative method and a phenomenological approach. The study focuses on policy communication on the aspects of transmission, clarity, and transparency of information using data analysis techniques of qualitative interactive models. The results of this study indicate that the communication of Makassar city government policies in reducing community poverty is considered less effective; this is indicated by one of the poverty reduction policies through the Productive Economic Enterprises (UEP) assistance program and the Joint Business Group assistance program (KUBE) whose distribution is not well targeted to the community due to the lack of information provided by the Makassar city government to the sub-district government to assign the sub-district party the task of identifying and collecting data on poor citizens. Apart from that, the Makassar city government also, according to the program policy, did not provide clear and transparent information on the amount of the budget allocated to each community group and the budget allocation for the development needs of the program, because of the UEP and KUBE policies. The findings of this study also assessed that the communication process for poverty alleviation policies did not work according to community expectations because of the sectoral ego of the city government which was politicized by seeking benefits to be obtained by several parties who were not responsible for the implementation of the UEP and KUBE programs.
 Keywords: policy communications, government, poverty