Sri Mulyani Gives Credit To Civil Servants, Free Toll For Students When?

Minister of Finance, Sri Mulyani. (Photo: Instagram @smindrawati)

JAKARTA - The government through the Ministry of Finance plans to provide free pulses of IDR 150 thousand for civil servants. The purpose of this allowance is to support employee performance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani said that the credit allowance was given from the budget for unused goods. These budgets will later be diverted for credit allowances.

"Many ministries / agencies and ASN have a lot of work from home (WFH) activities. Many goods expenditure budgets are unused. We give support if you want to be reallocated in the form of allowances for pulses. This is called flexibility," he said at a press conference for the National Budget. Jakarta, Tuesday, August 25.

On the same occasion, the Director General of Budget for the Ministry of Finance, Askolani, explained that the credit allowance was provided in order to support employee performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because the pandemic requires employees to work from home to prevent transmission of the virus.

"Currently, Rp150 thousand have been used for employees. We will revise this to the Minister of Finance to become Rp. 200 thousand. If it is approved, it will be set in August. We have coordinated with the General Secretariat," he said.

Then what about the free pulses for students in participating in distance learning? There is no clarity about the free credit allowance for students to female students. In the event of the National Budget, there was no mention of the education subsidy.

Whereas previously, Sri Mulyani said, the challenges facing the education sector today are so great. The COVID-19 pandemic requires people to limit social activities, including limiting face-to-face learning for students to university students.

However, this online learning system cannot be accessed or implemented by all students. The limitation of cell phones as a support, so that they cannot buy credit to access online classes, is often experienced. Sri said, because of this, the government prepared an education donation.

"Therefore we are resolving together with the relevant ministries how we can help," he said, in the "Mutual Cooperation #JagaUMKMIndonesia: Government Stimulus to Strengthen MSMEs", Tuesday, August 11.

Sri explained that education assistance will continue to be prioritized along with health facilities in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for poor families.

On the other hand, Sri revealed, the main obstacle for the government to launch the program was the messy data problem. For this reason, the government is currently tidying up the data that could receive these benefits so that it is right on target.