The Budget For Handling COVID-19 In 2022 Is Down, The House Of Representatives Is Worried That The Incentive For Healthcare Will Be Reduced

Illustration of Health Workers (Photo: Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Member of Commission IX of the Indonesian House of Representatives Kurniasih Mufidayati, highlighted the decline in the budget for handling COVID-19 in 2022. She hopes that this budget decline will not have an impact on the incentives for health workers (nakes) who are still fighting on the front lines against the pandemic.

"I don't understand why the government has actually lowered the budget so much, which is inversely proportional to the big target," said Mufida, Saturday, August 28.

It is known, in the 2022 RAPBN, the handling of COVID-19 is budgeted at Rp115.9 trillion. This amount decreased by 42.4 percent from the 2021 budget which reached Rp201.2 trillion.

Mufida assesses that this budget reduction will become a new problem in the future, one of which is the issue of incentives for health workers.

This year alone, she said, the realization of the health worker incentive after one semester was only Rp0.12 trillion from the allocation of Rp1.44 trillion or only 8.3 percent. In fact, during this 1 semester, Indonesia experienced 2 times the peak of the COVID-19 wave. "It is possible that the incentives for health workers will decrease because the budget is running low," said Mufida.

"In addition, what guarantees will be realized for the families of health workers who died in 2022 because the budget for handling COVID-19 is getting smaller?" she continued.

In the 2022 APBN draft, the PKS politician also highlighted the coverage of participants receiving the National Health Insurance (JKN) contribution assistance (PBI) as many as 96.8 million people.

This means, said Mufida, the number is the same as the conditions before the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has had a huge impact on public health and economics.

"The JKN PBI recipients are allocated 96.8 million, even though the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is very large and has caused the number of poor families and unemployment to increase," said Mufida.