Ambon Want Priority To Get Social Assistance Fishermen And Angkot Drivers

The acting Mayor of Ambon, Bodewin Wattimena. ANTARA/Penina Mayaut.

JAKARTA - The City Government (Pemkot) has allocated two percent of the special budget from the Ambon City Regional Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBD) for social assistance.

"We are allocating the availability of two percent of funds from the Ambon City APBD for the subsidy for Direct Cash Assistance to the community," said Ambon Mayor Bodewin Wattimena, in Ambon, Saturday, September 24.

He said the main priority of BLT-BBM social assistance as a result of the increase in fuel was given to fishermen and public transport drivers.

The Ministry of Finance (Kemenkeu) has issued a regulation requiring local governments (Pemda) to spend two percent of public transfer funds (DTU) for social assistance for the community.

The regulation is contained in the Regulation of the Minister of Finance Number 134/PMK.07/2022 concerning Mandatory Expenditures in the Context of Handling the Impact of Inflation in 2022.

Currently, said Bodewin, his party is temporarily preparing an action plan related to the quantity of fishermen and fuel needs every month.

"We are currently preparing an action plan that is focused on fishermen. We will compare how many fishermen, fuel needs, then we can talk about it later, we will subsidize several liters. All of these efforts are made so that the assistance provided is right on target and right on benefits," he said as quoted by Antara.

The action plan, he said, was carried out with certainty and clarity by the relevant agencies with the Ambon City Regional Inflation Control Team (TPID).

"We will also target other professions that are affected or not like angkot drivers and others," he said.

Bodewin stated that the target recipients of BLT BBM were not subsidies due to the increase in Angkot tariffs, therefore it was fishermen who had to use subsidized fuel for fishing operations at sea.

"We will take the allocation from the APBD according to the central transfer fund in the form of general allocation funds (DAU) that have been allocated to the APBD, 2 percent cut for the allocation of BLT-BBM to communities affected by the increase in fuel," he said.