Government Claims Pre-Employment Card To Be The Most Useful Social Assistance During The Pandemic

Head of the Ministry of Finance's Fiscal Policy Agency Febrio Kacaribu (Photo: Screenshot of the Pre-Employment Card Youtube)

JAKARTA - The government through the Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu) said that the effectiveness of the Pre-Employment Card Program was quite high during the two years of implementation.

Head of the Fiscal Policy Agency of the Ministry of Finance, Febrio Kacaribu, said that this assumption was obtained from the results of a survey conducted by a multinational research and consulting firm from France, Ipsos, some time ago.

"A survey of the perceived benefits of the government's social assistance program during the COVID-19 pandemic conducted by Ipsos in 2021 stated that the Pre-Employment Card Program was the most useful," he said in a webinar held on Wednesday, December 1.

According to Febrio, the scheme and the benefits of the Pre-Employment Card are considered by respondents to be superior to social assistance such as electricity subsidies, internet subsidies, MSME direct cash assistance (BLT), village fund BLT, basic food cards, the family of hope program (PKH), tax incentives, discounts. housing VAT, and others.

“The Pre-Employment Card Program is a strategic initiative of the government in dealing with the pandemic because it is not only a means of transferring funds to the community but also offers capacity building. In addition, it becomes the foundation in achieving wider job opportunities, especially in economic activities, which are still as they are today," he said.

Furthermore, Sri Mulyani's subordinates ensured that the government would continue to implement this program for the following years.

“The Pre-Employment Card Program is still being implemented. The implementation scheme is semi-social assistance, but it will still be carried out regularly and will start by considering the increasingly conducive situation," he said.

For information, this year the government initially budgeted Rp20 trillion for Pre-Employment Card funds. However, due to the pandemic situation that had spiked due to the delta variant, an additional budget was made to IDR 21.2 trillion. Meanwhile, the realization until October 31, 2021 has been distributed Rp9.42 trillion to 2.7 million participants.

Meanwhile, in 2020, the Pre-Employment Card budget allocation was known to be Rp. 10 trillion, with the realization of Rp. 13.4 trillion for 5.9 million recipients.

Then for 2022, the state is said to have prepared Rp11 trillion in funds taken from the social protection budget ceiling (Perlinsos) with a total of Rp252.3 trillion.