Not Corruption, Jayawijaya Social Agency Calls Reducing Social Assistance Recipients Because Residents Don't Have e-KTP

Illustration-Residents demonstrating to PT Pos Wamena regarding social assistance. (ANTARA)

PAPUA - Head of Jayawijaya Regency Social Service (Dinsos), Nicolas Itlay, spoke up following protests from residents of Maima and Wouma Districts who were not registered as beneficiaries of social assistance (bansos).

According to Nicolas Itlay, residents who don't receive it are because they don't have identity cards such as electronic identity cards (e-KTP) and family cards (KK).

"There are two problems that make not all residents receive assistance from the center. First, the data is not properly covered by village/village operators and second, there are still residents who do not have electronic ID cards and family cards," Nicolas said while in Wamena, as reported by Antara, Sunday, August 22.

With this obstacle, his party immediately rearranged the social service data so that residents who really needed help could receive it.

The Social Service will also coordinate with the district and village level program operators for the Family Hope Program (PKH), so as to collect data on residents as a whole.

"Operators from these villages do not collect data on all of their citizens, so many cannot, and that data is only entered into the social service," he said.

The head of the Maima District, Irman Begint, said that the number of residents who received social assistance from the government reached 600 people, but then it was reduced to 200 people in 2021.

Wouma District Residents Demo

Around 200 residents of Wouma District in Jayawijaya Regency, Papua Province, staged a peaceful demonstration at the Wamena Indonesian Post Office (Posindo).

The masses questioned why they no longer received direct cash assistance (BLT) distributed by the central government.

The coordinator of the action, Kaitanusik Ikinia, said that in previous years, 1,603 Wouma residents received BLT. But lately, the number of recipients has decreased for no apparent reason.

"But currently only 285 people have come out (registered to receive), most of them can't anymore," he said in Wamena, the capital of Jayawijaya Regency, as reported by Antara, Thursday, August 12.

They questioned the reduction in the number of beneficiaries. According to them, most of those who did not accept were residents of Wouma.

They expect Posindo, the Population Service, and the Social Service to re-coordinate regarding the reduced recipient data because initially, the district-level social assistance operators had already submitted recipient data to the government.

"We suspect that there must be a game between district heads, district operators and social services and the post office, because at the beginning 1,603 people had received it but now almost 1,000 people cannot. What is this, even though they are local people who really need it," he said.