PDTT Mendes Claims Have Not Found Facts About Village Fund BLT Deductions

JAKARTA - In the midst of the corona virus pandemic or COVID-19, the issue of cutting the value of direct cash assistance (BLT) for Village Funds has emerged by several villages, one of which is in Purwakarta. In fact, this assistance is urgently needed by the community in the current difficult conditions.

Responding to this, the Village Minister for Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration (PDTT) Abdul Halim Iskandar said, based on checking and deepening in the field, no violations had yet been found.

"From every report we have, we always confirm the checking and so on. Alhamdulillah, from the deepening of various information and reports, we have not been able to find the facts," he said in a video conference with journalists, Friday, May 22.

Abdul Halim believes that the Village Fund BLT cuts did not happen. This is because the villagers have a high level of mutual cooperation between fellow residents. Apart from that, he said, supervision of village funds was also tight and transparent.

"We are very confident and kind to think that the village community has a high sense of crisis because they both live in the village. The community has a high level of mutual cooperation," he said.

Furthermore, he said, PDTT Ministry partners, namely village volunteers fighting COVID-19 will also oversee from data collection to distribution of Village Fund BLT assistance.

"Coupled with village volunteers fighting COVID-19, Nabinsa and Babinkamtibnas, of course there will also be supervision from the sub-district so we are sure that the distribution of Village Fund BLT can be as expected," he said.

Abdul Halim said that the Village Fund BLT budget that had been disbursed was IDR 2.281 trillion. Therefore, supervision of its distribution must also be accountable and transparent.

"The flow of supervision has taken place since the planning of supervision, has been running since planning. Who is doing the supervision? Yes, the public in general. Of course there will be internal supervision related to later use of the inspectorate's village funds accountability later on the administrative side and others," he said.

According to Abdul Halim, from the implementation side of the Village Fund BLT, at the planning level alone there is transparency, namely who is conducting data collection and on which basis is data collection.

Furthermore, Abdul Halim said that data collection was carried out by village volunteers against COVID-19. They consist of the village head as chairman, the head of the BPD as deputy chairman, plus the RT head, traditional leaders, religious leaders, and community leaders including their partners namely Babinsa and Babinkamtibnas.

"Village volunteers against COVID-19 have accommodated all stakeholders in the village. Then they are in charge of data collection. How many people update data collection? Three people per one RT. So the data base is at the RT level, done by three people. Why? doubts in deciding the beneficiary candidates, "he explained.

According to Abdul Halim, if three volunteers have declared someone new as a poor citizen due to COVID-19, it means that the first form of transparency is already in place.

After the data is collected on the basis of the RT, he continued, the data is taken to a village meeting which will be held a special meeting to verify, validate, as well as finalize the data collection results at the RT level.

"Thus transparency is very clear and institutionalized, because it is discussed in a special village meeting," he said.

Not only that, Abdul Halim said, announcements were also made by posting them in public places in the village area. So, all village people can find out about the data collection.

"There are in the village hall, in front of the mosque, there have been many reports of the patching. This is also a form of institutional transparency. So if you are asked how the supervision is, yes the supervision is carried out by all institutions," he said.