BPS takes away entitlement of 4,145 families to cash aid

BPS takes away entitlement of 4,145 families to cash aid

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A total of 4,145 families in the city had been disqualified as
recipients of the central government scheme to provide direct
compensation to the poor for the recent fuel price hikes, an
official said on Monday.

Director of the Social Statistics Division at the Jakarta
Statistics Agency (BPS Jakarta), Rusman Heriawan, said that
further verification found that the families were actually
ineligible for inclusion in the assistance program.

He said that the BPS had also added 6,200 new low-income
families in the capital to the list of people eligible to receive
Fuel Compensation Cards (KKB), which enabled them to receive Rp
300,000 every three months from certain post offices.

"From around 101,219 families who are on the BPS list, 4,145,
or about 4 percent, are not eligible for the cash aid. We have
also revoked another 309 cards as the families have moved to away
or the households no longer exist," Rusman said as quoted by
Antara.

The BPS had yet to distribute the cards to the 4,145 families
affected, added Rusman.

He said that the BPS would ask state postal operator PT
Posindo, which is tasked with paying out the assistance to the
entitled low-income families, to remove the names of the 4,145
ineligible households and add the 6,200 newly entitled families.

Since the start of the distribution of the cards on Sept. 26,
so far, according to Rusman, around 93,300 families or about 92
percent of the total number of entitled families had already
received the cards.

Due to a lack of staff, the BPS could only verify the data on
20 percent of the families on the list, while the remaining 80
percent had been verified by local youth organization Karang
Taruna and family welfare movement groups (PKK) in each
subdistricts.

Rusman explained that the government was now drawing up a plan
for unregistered poor residents of Jakarta. The BPS has so
registered 4,000 of these families, including families living
under bridges and along riverbanks.

"But they will not be entitled to receive the cash
assistance ... The government is still formulating an appropriate
poverty alleviation program for them," he added.

The registration of low-income families by the BPS was carried
out between Aug. 15 and Sept. 15, and involved 205,028 BPS
officers.

There are 14 criteria used as yardsticks for assessing whether
a household is poor, including daily income and expenditure on
healthcare, food and clothing.

If a family meets at least eight of the criteria, then it is
entitled to receive Rp 100,000 per month, which is distributed
every three months.

The first disbursement of the money was for the October to
December period. The second disbursement is expected to be
carried out early next year.

The Jakarta administration has decided to periodically
evaluate whether the cardholders are still eligible to receive
the assistance.

Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo said over the weekend that poor
families who received financial assistance from relatives outside
the family unit did not satisfy the set criteria set and would be
removed from the list of those entitled.