Anies Responds To The KJMU Polemic: The State Must Be Responsible For Finishing It Until It's Complete

Presidential candidate number 1 Anies Baswedan responded to the polemic of the Jakarta Superior Student Card (KJMU). Where, this program reaped complaints due to many students who had been removed from the list of recipients of social assistance for education costs.

The former governor of DKI Jakarta emphasized that the government cannot arbitrarily cut off access to scholarships for residents when the distribution of aid has not been completed.

"Those who are studying and are being financed, the state must be responsible for completing it thoroughly. Otherwise, there are so many parents, children who have suffered from such policies," said Anies in Bintaro, South Tangerang, Friday, March 8.

Anies admitted that he did not oppose if the DKI Provincial Government wanted to change the policy of distributing KJMU which he had initiated since 2019 when he was still leading Jakarta. However, if there is a change, the government should not stop the rights of KJMU recipients in the middle of the road.

"Even if the program doesn't want to continue, there is a decision not to continue, then do it by no new recurrence. However, those who have entered the recipient must be financed completely. Otherwise, they will be neglected because they are people who need help," explained Anies.

For information, the problem of removing thousands of student names occurred due to changes in the data on KJMU recipients for phase 1 of 2024. The DKI Provincial Government uses a new mechanism in the use of data sources.

The source of data on the determination of KJMU recipients that students had complained about was the Integrated Social Welfare Data (DTKS) which was approved by the Ministry of Social Affairs.

The data is then 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.

Finally, the Acting Governor of DKI Jakarta, Heru Budi Hartono, decided to re-enter the data on KJMU recipients who had previously been crossed out. Even though the student data was re-entered, the DKI Provincial Government continues to 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.