Dr. Ir. Anang Lastriyanto, MSi bersama anggota tim Ekspedisi Patriot UB dan Dinas Perindustrian, Perdagangan, Koperasi, dan Usaha Kecil Menengah Kabupaten Sorong. (Foto: Istimewa)
SORONG — Klamono holds an irony. This district in Sorong Regency, Southwest Papua, has been known as an oil town since Dutch colonial times. Its old wells and the roughly 50-kilometer pipeline connecting it to Sorong still exist today. Yet the people living around them struggle to get affordable fuel, and clean water.
That is the problem Dr. Ir. Anang Lastriyanto, MSi, a lecturer at Brawijaya University (UB) in Malang and supervisor of one of the Patriot Expedition teams in Klamono, set out to solve. Together with five team members, all university graduates, he lived among and mentored residents for four full months.
The Patriot Expedition is a Ministry of Transmigration program, now in its second year, to strengthen and empower human resources in transmigration areas. UB is one of ten universities entrusted with running it.
An Oil Hub Where Fuel Is Hard to Come By
Speaking to Desa Bersuara, Pak Anang explained that water and energy are the two main constraints holding residents back. Well water there often smells of oil, so residents rely on the river, which runs clear in the dry season but turns muddy brown in the rainy season, along with collected rainwater.
Cooking is just as hard. Subsidized LPG is not available. The only option is a non-subsidized 12-kilogram cylinder costing up to Rp50,000 per kilogram, or around Rp600,000 per cylinder. “The more tragic part is that it’s an oil hub, yet people can’t enjoy it at an economical price or in reasonable amounts,” he said. Kerosene is rationed too, at around 10 to 15 liters per household per month.
A Biomass Stove Residents Had Been “Waiting For”
In response, the team introduced biomass stoves that can burn the leftover wood and twigs plentiful around the settlements. The results were encouraging. According to the team’s survey at 14 transmigration settlement sites, around 90 percent of residents accepted the stoves.
“There, people were actually waiting for it. Why? Because leftover wood and unused twigs can be used directly.”
Dr. Ir. Anang Lastriyanto, MSi
For clean water, the team installed a river-water purification system in one village. Now 45 households use it and no longer have to buy water for cooking and daily needs. The team also introduced appropriate technology for processing local farm produce such as tubers, chilies and coconut.
A “Tech Kiosk” So Innovation Doesn’t Stop
Pak Anang knows sustainability is the hardest challenge for any mentoring program. So his team did more than hand out equipment. Each site was visited at least five times, from outreach and needs surveys to mentoring until residents had truly mastered the technology.
Residents were also encouraged to use the biomass stoves for business, such as frying chips or baking bread and cakes in an oven heated by the stove. The team set up a “tech kiosk”, a kind of hardware shop supplying spare parts for the water purifiers and biomass stoves, with local technicians the team keeps in regular contact with. The kiosk can also serve as an outlet for residents’ products.
“If it’s useful and economical, cheaper, people will keep using it. Unless it’s more complicated, more expensive, and there are no spare parts, then it will surely be abandoned,” he explained.
He also stresses a change in mindset. Training that has long been associated with “envelopes” of cash is reframed as a space for sharing knowledge and motivation. “Don’t just think short term; think further ahead,” he said.
Bridging Transmigrants and Indigenous Papuans
In every activity, the team works with officials from village-level military officers (Babinsa) and Koramil to the police, as well as community leaders. The mentoring reaches not only villages settled by transmigrants from Java but also villages whose residents are almost entirely Indigenous Papuans. The team tries to act as a bridge, set an example and motivate local children to pursue higher education.
“Strengthening the grassroots is the core of national strengthening. It must not be owned only by a limited circle; it has to start from the frontline villages,” Pak Anang said.
Looking ahead, he hopes these innovations can be adopted into local government policy. But since regional and village budgets are also stretched by road maintenance, he sees CSR support from companies in the area, such as oil palm plantations and Pertamina, as the most realistic way to continue the program. The team plans to bring the program to the attention of CSR partners.
Three Decades of Science in Service of Ordinary People
The work in Klamono is nothing new for this lecturer at UB’s Faculty of Agricultural Technology, who has taught since 1990. Since 1993, he has developed an affordable vacuum fryer after seeing that imported machines were too expensive for small businesses. The patented machine helps small enterprises turn fruit and vegetables into quality chips, and has earned him several honors, including a place among 102 Indonesian Innovations (2010), the Ristek Award (2011) and the Outstanding Intellectual Property Award in the patent category (2014), as reported by Indiekraf. He has said he wants Indonesia’s farmers and small businesses to be more than spectators.
He also led research on a “4 in 1” vacuum cooler for honey processing that combines pasteurization, vacuum cooling, moisture reduction and foam removal in a single set of equipment, described as the first of its kind in Indonesia. The research, funded by LPDP from 2019 to 2023, is now used by a local honey producer in Malang, as reported by LPDP.
From vacuum fryers for small businesses and honey processors for producers to biomass stoves and water purifiers for Klamono residents, the common thread is the same: science must go into the field and answer people’s real needs. “Before, it was just extension work and then leave, extension work and then leave. Here, we go all the way to action,” Pak Anang said.
