Moeldoko: Implementation Of Health Screening Minimizes Casualties From Election Officers

Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko in a coordination meeting on the development of health data from the 2024 election organizers (Special)

JAKARTA - The Presidential Chief of Staff, General TNI (Ret.) Moeldoko, expressed his deep condolences for the death of a number of general election officers (elections) in 2024. He ensured that the government would fulfill the rights of all election officials who died while carrying out their duties.

"I will also ensure that election officials will get their rights according to existing regulations," said Moeldoko after chairing a coordination meeting regarding the development of health data for election organizers in 2024, at the Ministry of Health office, Monday, February 19.

The coordination meeting on the development of health data for the 2024 election organizers was attended by the Minister of Home Affairs, Tito Karnavian, Minister of Health, Budi Gunadi Sadikin, Chairman of the General Election Commission, Hasyim Asy'ari, President Director of BPJS Kesehatan, Ghufron Mukti, and representatives from the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu).

According to Moeldoko, although the death rate in the 2024 election is smaller than 2019, the government is actually targeting zero deaths of election officials at the implementation of this year's democratic party.

For this reason, he continued, the Presidential Staff Office had long initiated a Joint Circular (SEB) to provide health screening and health protection for election officials, as well as form a cross-ministerial/institutional team to oversee it.

Namely, from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Health, General Election Commission (KPU), Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu), and BPJS Health.

The implementation of the SEB, he continued, was an anticipatory step by the government in minimizing the death toll from election officials, as well as building the preparedness of the health team.

"Although there are four percent of officers who have not been registered, there are real efforts by all officers to carry out health screening," he explained.

"I appreciate the performance of all ministries/agencies in carrying out this SEB, so that we can map out the health risks of officers, and provide maximum service to them so that the death toll from election officials can be minimized," added Moeldoko.

Furthermore, the 2013-2015 TNI Commander reminded health facilities and health workers to maintain vigilance in providing health services for election officials, even though the trend of visits by officers to health facilities has decreased significantly.

Moeldoko also ensured that the government would improve the health care system for election officials so that in the implementation of the democratic party in the future there would be no more officers who died. Moreover, soon there will also be simultaneous regional head elections (pilkada).

"No matter how small the percentage of officers who died, it was still the death toll. For this reason, improvement efforts must be made so that no more officers die," he concluded.

For information, BPJS Kesehatan noted that there were 626,731 election officers in 2024 who had used the National Health Insurance (JKN) health facility. In addition, more than 6.8 million election officials have undergone health history screening.

Of these, 398,155 or 5.83% of election officials are at risk of disease and 6,427,796 or 94.17% of election officials are not at risk of disease.