Survey: People Want The Government To Prioritize Economic Handling

JAKARTA - The public wants the government to prioritize economic problems over health during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is based on the results of a survey by the Indonesian Political Indicator Survey Institute.

Executive Director of Political Indicators, Burhanuddin Murtadi, said that there were 47.9 people who wanted the government to prioritize the economy.

Meanwhile, there are 45 percent of people who prefer the government to prioritize health problems. Then, there were 7 percent who answered they didn't know or didn't answer.

"However, the difference in responses in July between pro-health and economic respondents is not statistically significant," said Burhanuddin in a survey presentation via webinar, Tuesday, July 21.

Burhanuddin explained that the trend of people who want the government to prioritize economic problems has increased from the results of a survey two months ago with a figure of 45 percent.

This increase is in line with the decrease in the number of people who want the government to prioritize health problems two months ago with a figure of 60.7 percent.

The increase in people who want the government to prioritize health is due to an increase in the impact of losing jobs from the community.

About 16.9 percent have experienced layoffs since the pandemic hit. There are 24.4 percent of respondents who were sent home. As many as 32 percent did not lose their jobs but jobs and income were reduced. Meanwhile, 24.7 percent continued to work as usual.

"So, the impact is quite large. I think we have never had this profound experience on the economy," said Burhanuddin.

For information, this survey was conducted in the period from 13 to 16 July 2020. The survey was conducted on 1,200 people using telephone contacts to respondents who had been asked to survey the previous period.

This survey has a margin of error (tolerance of error) of 2.9 percent and has a confidence level of 95 percent. Samples come from all provinces that are proportionally distributed.