Acting Governor Heru Budi's Response To Sahroni's Called Himself Eligible To Be Fired By Jokowi

JAKARTA - Acting Governor of DKI Jakarta Heru Budi Hartono responded to the statement by the General Treasurer of the NasDem Party Ahmad Sahroni who saw Heru worthy of being fired from his leadership in Jakarta by President Joko Widodo.

Heru was reluctant to respond to Sahroni's sentiment, which is now being held to participate in this year's DKI Jakarta gubernatorial election contestation. He only answered by calling for the current Jakarta slogan.

"Jakarta Success for Indonesia," said Heru while staying away from journalists at DKI Jakarta City Hall, Central Jakarta, Thursday, March 7.

Previously, Ahmad Sahroni assessed that the problems arising from the revocation of the Jakarta Superior Student Card (KJMU) for many students were Heru's responsibility.

The Deputy Chairman of Commission III of the DPR RI views that the revocation of the KJMU made Heru damage the good name of President Joko Widodo. Considering that Heru is the Acting Regional Head who is still the Head of the Presidential Secretariat (Kasetpres).

"What Mr. Heru did, is not in line with the spirit and direction of Mr. President Jokowi who is pro-people. Moreover, this is a matter of education. So, Mr. Heru is the same as destroying Pak Jokowi's good name," said Sahroni in his statement.

The number of students who were dropped from KJMU recipients, considered Sahroni, resulted in greater inequality in access to education due to the threat of dropping out of college.

In fact, Sahroni asked Jokowi to fire Heru and replace him with other officials for the remaining term of office of the Acting Governor of DKI Jakarta until the determination of the Governor of DKI was definitive.

"So the President should immediately fire Acting Heru. There are many policies that are very extreme and clearly detrimental to the community," said Sahroni.

For information, there is a change in the data on KJMU recipients phase 1 of 2024 because the DKI Provincial Government uses a new mechanism in the use of data sources.

The data source for determining KJMU recipients that students had complained about was the Integrated Social Welfare Data (DTKS) as of February and November 2022, as well as as as as of January and December 2023 which were approved by the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Then, the data is matched with data from the Socio-Economic Registration (Regsosek) issued by the Ministry of National Development Planning/National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas).

The matching of DTKS with Regsosek is carried out to find out the ranking of welfare (desil). The decil categories that are still included in the criteria as recipients of educational assistance are very poor (desil 1), poor (desil 2), almost poor (desil 3), and vulnerable to poverty (desil 4).

Meanwhile, KJMU recipient students who are now set to fall into the 5-10 decile category or who are considered to be able to be removed from the list of recipients of social assistance for education costs.

The problem is that many underprivileged students are set to be included in the 5-10 decile, so they are removed from the KJMU list of recipients.

The chaos of the KJMU that shocked the public was finally followed up. The DKI Jakarta Provincial Government decided to re-enter the data on KJMU recipients who had previously been crossed out.

Heru Budi admitted that there was an error in the KJMU recipient determination system so that it removed thousands of students from the list of recipients.

Although the student data was re-entered, Heru emphasized that his party would still re-check it to determine the feasibility of the recipients of the social assistance for education costs.

The feasibility check for receiving the assistance includes a field survey regarding the socio-economic conditions concerned, synchronizing data on ownership of assets and vehicles, as well as improving welfare rankings (desils) which are appropriate benchmarks for the KJMU to be given.

"Later, it will be cross-checked with tax data from the Regional Revenue Agency. We will look at the data, surveyed again. Indeed, those who do not get the KJMU because everything is capable, so, yes, we hold it. We can give this budget to people who can't afford it," explained Heru.

To the students whose names had been dropped from the list of recipients, Heru asked them not to worry about the problem anymore because the DKI Provincial Government has taken steps as a solution.

"I make sure that those who have received it on their way to KJMU can still get it, and of course the data matching will continue. That's the person to person," explained Heru.