Community Care: Kirana Megatara Strives for Continuous Community Engagement
PT Kirana Megatara Tbk (KMTR), the largest crumb rubber producer in Indonesia, continues to develop its community care programs, prioritizing and supporting the social and economic welfare of its smallholder farmers. Collaborating with prominent global tire makers, Kirana focuses its community engagement programs on Food Aid, Educational Scholarships, and Coagulant and Equipment subsidy.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Kirana's joint Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Food-Aid programs helped alleviate the economic burden of the adversely impacted rubber farmers within the country. The programs provided basic food packages to Kirana Megatara's partner farmers in plantation locations throughout the Sumatran island. Distributed in a typical shopping bag made out of "green" material, the food packages consisted of essential products like rice, cooking oil, and sugar.
From the end of October 2020 to January 2021, the initial program targeted their relief packages to smallholder farmers in the Jambi, Bengkulu, Riau, and Bangka-Belitung provinces, distributing packages to a total of 3,165 families. While a second program, spanning from the end of December 2020 through the middle of March 2021, saw aid packages distributed to 2,890 smallholder families within the South Sumatra province.
Kirana Megatara's Chief Sustainability Officer Mr. Widyantoko Sumarlin stated that the drastic decrease in demand for rubber resulted in the birth of Kirana's Food-Aid programs.
"When the pandemic hit, the smallholder rubber farmers lost a high percentage of their income due to the decrease in rubber demand; therefore, our programs aimed to do the best we could to alleviate their living costs," added Sumarlin.
In December of 2021, the Kirana Megatara Group orchestrated an event that saw the rewarding of educational scholarship aid for 65 children of farmers in South Sumatra and surrounding areas. With a recurring aim to ease the burdening living costs for the farmers, the Kirana scholarship package amounts to 3.5 million Rupiah for High School students, 3 million Rupiah for Middle School students, and 2.5 million for Elementary students.
Established in 2014 and carried out every year since, the CSR educational assistance program continues to improve the welfare of the partnered farmers, maintaining the sustainability and quality of the produced rubber.
Finally, more recently, in 2022, the Kirana Megatara Group organized a joint CSR program with the theme "Coagulant and Food Aid Program for Sustainable Rubber 2022." This program involved providing aid packages in the form of necessities and formic acid to the company's affiliated rubber farmers throughout the Sumatran island. A total of 1,814 packages of basic foods, essential equipment, and formic coagulant acid were delivered to the farmers in four factory locations.
The distribution and subsidy of formic coagulant acid have become a yearly objective for the Kirana Megatara Group. Advocating for more sustainable rubber production practices, Kirana offers rubber farmers more environmentally safe and homogenous coagulation of the produced rubber. With many farmers turning towards more widely available yet environmentally harmful sulfuric coagulant acid, Kirana's distribution of formic acid helps ease the farmers' cost while increasing the rubber production's quality.
Sumarlin pledges that Kirana Megatara will continue to provide the best for the partnered rubber farmers.
"We will continue to collaborate with world tire factories who are Kirana Megatara buyers to continue contributing to sustainability programs. It is hoped that this will ease the burden on farmers who continue to experience the ups and downs of the rubber industry. Thus, a good relationship will continue to be created between factories and farmers in maintaining the fulfilment of quality rubber supplies," remarked Sumarlin.