Residents Of Cianjur Can Smile In The Middle Of Emergency PPKM, Get Cash Assistance

JAKARTA - Residents of Cianjur Regency, West Java who are affected by the Emergency Restrictions on Community Activities (PPKM) will receive social assistance in the form of cash from the local district government, and until now the data collection on the criteria for the recipients of the assistance has been carried out.

"For the recipients, one of them is residents with low incomes and their businesses are disrupted during the implementation of the emergency PPKM, in the form of cash assistance, but we are still collecting data", said Cianjur Regent, Herman Suherman in Cianjur, Sunday, as reported by Antara, Sunday, July 4.

He explained recipients must be channeled through the post office, not registered as recipients of other assistance such as Family Hope Program (PKH), and Non-Cash Food Assistance (BPNT), or other social assistance.

The social service agency was asked to immediately complete data collection on how many people were affected to receive assistance.

To speed up data collection, his party also involves sub-district and village officials, so the number of funds that will be prepared by the regional government will be adjusted to the number of recipients. But at least the amount given is sufficient for daily food needs.

"We will wait for the number of recipients and it will be adjusted to the available budget, but at least one person gets allowances for their daily food needs", he said.

Meanwhile, various groups assessed that the data collection carried out by the regional government was too late, even though it was only one day that the implementation of the emergency PPKM was carried out, even the performance of the relevant agencies was considered not responsive because they had just collected data.

"Emergency PPKM has been implemented, data collection for affected residents and recipients of assistance has just been carried out, this is clearly very late and can cause conflict in the community. If you just collect the data, when will it be distributed, the district government, especially the service, should be ready", said the Director of Cianjur Research Center (CRC), Anton Ramadan.

He explained that the slow and non-functioning of each related agency, during the pandemic in conducting data collection, was very visible when the district government needed data for residents affected by the pandemic which had been running for two years.

"Relevant agencies should already have the data, not just register them because the number of affected residents continues to increase during the pandemic. We hope that the government's good intentions do not become a new problem in the community", he said.