The Minister Of Social Affairs Gives The Local Government Spaces To Manage The Distribution Of Problematic Social Assistance

Minister of Social Affairs, Juliari Batubara. (Photo: Twitter @juliaribatubara)

JAKARTA - The distribution of social assistance for handling the corona virus or COVID-19 from the central government has been running for one week. However, Social Minister Juliari Batubara admitted that the distribution did not run smoothly.

Juliari admitted that there were several problems in the distribution of social assistance by local governments, namely that there were social assistance recipients from the wealthy. On the other hand, there are also people in need who are not registered as recipients of social assistance.

"We respond to various responses, comments, criticisms, or also input from the regions regarding the social assistance mechanism," said Juliari in a video conference broadcast on YouTube by the Cabinet Secretariat, Monday, April 27.

One of the problems in the distribution of social assistance, said Juliari, is due to the complexity of recipient data. The data is not only sourced from the poor who are recorded in the integrated social welfare data (DTKS), but also for the vulnerable to the poor whose economic power is weakened due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Therefore, Juliari asked local governments to be allowed to add to the list of citizens who should receive social assistance but have not registered in the DTKS owned by the central government.

"We give flexibility to all regional governments, please provide the names of social assistance recipients who are not in the DTKS," said Juliari.

"We do not lock down the regions to retrieve data from us from our DTKS, because we know our friends in the regions also really understand what is best for their regions," he added.

For information, the central government through the Ministry of Social Affairs has a social safety net program for handling COVID-19 in the form of social assistance distribution. First, the basic food assistance assistance for Jabodetabek residents is Rp. 600 thousand per family per month. Assistance is distributed for 3 months starting April 2020.

Then, cash assistance for residents outside Jabodetabek was given to 9 million families. This cash assistance is given as much as Rp. 600 thousand per month for residents who do not receive basic food assistance. Assistance is given for 3 months.