Minister Of Home Affairs Asks Regents And Mayors To Focus On Handling COVID-19 Cases

JAKARTA - Minister of Home Affairs (Mendagri) Tito Karnavian has asked regents and mayors to carry out a program to control COVID-19 and recover the economy.

The Minister of Home Affairs, Tito Karnavian, conveyed the message when he opened the provision of domestic government leadership for regents/mayors and deputy regents/deputy mayors in 2021.

The pair of regents/mayors as a result of the 2020 Simultaneous Regional Head Elections was asked to be able to control the outbreak through four indicators of controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.

These indicators are controlling positive numbers, bed occupancy rate (BOR) hospital occupancy, high recovery rates or cure rates, and low fatality rates. "What we can do is we can control the COVID-19 pandemic. I have said that on various occasions there are four (control) indicators," he said, quoted by Antara, Monday, June 7. The Minister of Home Affairs hopes that the four COVID-19 control indicators will serve as guidelines for regional heads in controlling cases of COVID-19 transmission in their regions.

Regional heads are also asked to be active directly or through the health office to check the trend of daily case numbers and the percentage of the four control indicators. That way, regional heads are expected to have sufficient data to form the basis for pandemic control policies.

"Well, these four numbers should be your guide every morning, try to keep the positive case numbers on a downward trend, recovery increases, death rates decrease, beds/BOR is below 50 percent, that means it's under control," he said. .

Economic control is also the emphasis of the Minister of Home Affairs in particular. With economic control, the Minister of Home Affairs hopes to increase the money circulating in the community so that it causes people's purchasing power to strengthen. "The recovering economy is also projected to increase regional original income (PAD)," said the Minister of Home Affairs. Tito emphasized that economic recovery is one of the main targets. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out economic recovery so that people can survive. "If the economy runs, PAD will automatically increase and return to normal," Tito continued.

Economic recovery is carried out, among others, through local government spending. Government spending is the main backbone in the midst of a contracted economic situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Government spending is the main expenditure. For that, try so that as soon as there is a APBD budget, the exercise will be carried out immediately, the execution will be carried out in stages every 3 months," said the Minister of Home Affairs.

The Minister of Home Affairs also requested that the realization of the APBD not be executed at the end of the fiscal year, thereby hampering national economic recovery. On the one hand, the Minister of Home Affairs also saw that there are still regencies/cities that have low realization of the APBD for the 2021 Fiscal Year.

In fact, the increasing national economic growth was also contributed by budget realization in the regions. Therefore, the Minister of Home Affairs asked the regions to immediately make capital expenditures or productive sectors that helped overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Please, fellow regional heads, spend it and please also look at the expenditure that is useful for those who can support/boost economic growth in the regions as well as the contribution to the center is the portion of capital expenditure," he said.