BPS Jakarta admits mistake in registrating the poor
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Jakarta branch of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS Jakarta) said on Thursday it had removed the names of 3,539 families from its list of families entitled to receive direct cash assistance from the government to help offset the impact of higher fuel prices.
BPS Jakarta head Sunari Sarwono said at City Hall his office would collect the fuel compensation cards from the families as soon as possible, adding that the cards would be destroyed to prevent them from being misused.
"There were some mistakes during the registration process that we uncovered during the verification," Sunari said.
Sunari said at least 3,263 families that registered for the cash assistance program did not meet the criteria, while 276 other families could either not be located or had moved.
"We have to drop their names from the list of recipients even if they consider themselves to be poor. They failed to meet the 14 criteria for those residents entitled to receive cash payments," he said.
To help offset the effects of the fuel price increases of Oct. 1, the government is giving Rp 100,000 (US$10) per month to poor families across the country.
In Jakarta, 101,219 poor families were initially registered to receive the money.
However, there are growing concerns over the accuracy of the data provided by BPS Jakarta, with many experts saying most of the recipients of the cash did not actually qualify for the program.
The admission on Thursday was the first time BPS Jakarta has acknowledged any errors in the gathering data on poor families in the capital.
Among the yardsticks used to measure whether families qualified for the assistance was how much money a household spent on health care, clothing, education and food.
The agency said it had distributed a total of 78,775 cards across the capital since late September.
Every recipient is entitled to receive Rp 100,000 in cash each month, with the money being delivered every three months. State postal company PT Posindo will be in charge of delivering the cash payments.
Governor Sutiyoso promised earlier that his administration would complete the distribution of the cards before Oct. 1, when the government announced the fuel price increases. However, the lengthy process of verifying those eligible for the program has slowed the delivery of the cards.
Limited human resources coupled with densely populated areas have also slowed the delivery of the cards.
BPS Jakarta employs just 250 officials, supported by 4,396 staff members, who must handle the entire process of identifying and verifying recipients of the cash in 44 districts across the city.
Sunari said his office had also received new reports that some 5,222 poor families had yet to be registered for the program.
"However, I have to make it clear that we have yet to verify whether these 5,222 families meet the criteria for the program. We must do this before giving them cards," he said.