Bekasi Regency Government Budget Intervention Of Regional Apparatus To Press Extreme Poverty Rate

Photo: Doc. Antara

JAKARTA - The Bekasi Regency Government, West Java intervened the regional apparatus budget as an effort to reduce extreme poverty through the synergy of the program of each device.

"We intervened by synergizing programs from each regional apparatus to deal with extreme poverty in Bekasi Regency," said Bekasi Regency Secretary Dedy Supriyadi in Cikarang, quoted from Antara, Saturday, January 28.

He gave an example of one of the programs that had been implemented, namely assistance in renovating uninhabitable houses (Rutilahu).

The program is considered appropriate to help reduce extreme poverty because one indicator of poverty is the condition of the feasibility of citizens' homes.

Then the social service assistance program which will be launched this year, both in the form of training and business capital assistance, as well as direct cash assistance and basic necessities.

Dedy also admitted that he had instructed all regional officials to follow up on the recommendations of the West Java Provincial Government, one of which was related to the re-validation of existing extreme community data.

"Our next step is what we have to do with the recommendations from the West Java Provincial Government. We will fix the extreme poverty data, we think it will be verification and validation again," he said.

He hopes that by running the synergy of programs, verification, and validation of data again, the number of people with the category of extreme poverty population in Bekasi Regency can continue to decrease every year.

"If it runs smoothly, hopefully, extreme poverty will decrease in Bekasi Regency," he said.

Referring to data released by the Central Statistics Agency of West Java Province, more than 202,000 people in Bekasi Regency in 2021 are categorized as poor even though the percentage is 5.2 percent or below the average percentage of provincial poverty, which is 8.4 percent.

From similar data, the percentage of extreme poverty in Bekasi Regency is 2.1 percent or 1.7 percent lower than extreme poverty in West Java, which is 3.8 percent.