Desil Controversy: DPR Urges Data Improvement and Appeal Mechanism

The accuracy of welfare data has become a critical issue as the government relies on it to determine recipients of various social protection programmes. Misclassification in determining desil positions risks leaving citizens whose economic circumstances have changed no longer recorded according to their actual situation.

Deputy Chairman of Commission II of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI), Aria Bima, has highlighted the controversy surrounding the determination of community welfare desils, which has recently drawn widespread complaints. According to him, data accuracy issues must not result in the loss of citizens’ rights to social protection.

Aria stated that the rise in negative sentiment on social media shows that the desil issue has developed into a problem of public trust in the government’s social protection system.

‘The figure of 6,310 mentions with negative sentiment of nearly 44 percent is not merely social media noise; it reflects citizens’ distrust of a system that was supposedly built to protect them,’ he told reporters on Wednesday (26/8/2026).

According to Aria, the public also needs to understand that desil represents the relative position of an individual or household within the national welfare distribution. Thus, a desil position does not absolutely indicate whether someone is classified as rich or poor.

However, he urged the government to acknowledge that data accuracy problems still exist. Data updates are considered not always able to keep pace with changes in the public’s economic conditions, which can shift within a short period.

One example is people who experience termination of employment (PHK). A household’s economic condition can deteriorate rapidly, while the data used by the government may still reflect the situation before the change occurred.

For this reason, Aria called on the government to provide a simple and easily accessible appeal mechanism. Such a mechanism is needed so that citizens who feel their desil classification does not match their factual condition can submit corrections.

Regional governments are also considered to have a role in the verification process. Officials at the regional level are deemed closer to the social and economic conditions of communities in their respective areas, and can therefore help ensure that data reflects conditions on the ground.

‘Data may serve as the basis for policy, but administrative errors must not deprive citizens of their rights to social protection. That is a non-negotiable principle,’ he said.

According to Aria, classification errors can have knock-on effects on citizens’ access to various social protection programmes, including education assistance for children.

He therefore urged the government not to rush into using desil data as the basis for revoking energy subsidies before data accuracy issues are resolved. Policy implementation, he argued, must be accompanied by a correction mechanism so that changes in citizens’ economic conditions can be promptly taken into account.

The issue demonstrates that using data for the distribution of assistance and subsidies requires not only a measurable database, but also updating and correction mechanisms capable of keeping pace with changes in the public’s circumstances.