Social Minister Supports Proposal for Inmates to Become Premium Assistance Recipients

JAKARTA - Social Minister Saifullah Yusuf (Gus Ipul) supports the proposal to provide social protection for prison inmates (WBP) or convicts through the Premium Assistance Recipients (PBI) scheme.

Gus Ipul expressed this during a visit from DPR Commission XIII member Rieke Diah Pitaloka along with the Head of the Special Health Care and Rehabilitation Working Group of the Directorate General of Corrections (Ditjenpas), dr Hetty Widiastuti, at the Ministry of Social Affairs office in Central Jakarta on Friday (27/3/2026).

“This plan aligns with the duties and functions of the Ministry of Social Affairs based on Article 34 of the 1945 Constitution. The poor and neglected children are cared for by the state,” said Gus Ipul in a press statement on Friday.

He stated that the social protection provided includes social assistance (bansos) in the form of the Family Hope Programme (PKH), basic food items, and PBI.

“Insha Allah, we will follow up on this information to provide protection for inmates,” he said.

Among them are the poor, neglected children, people with disabilities, neglected elderly, disaster victims, including former inmates of correctional institutions (convicts and political prisoners).

Currently, out of a total of 275,513 prison inmates, 112,882 people are already included in PBI.

“We will coordinate with BPS for the verification process and decile checks on inmates,” he said.

“So, anyone who meets the criteria can receive bansos as protection. The nature of social assistance is temporary, so they can rise to become independent families. So, bansos is actually only temporary,” he added.

For healthy assistance recipients who are of productive age, they do not need rehabilitation but social empowerment.

“In empowerment, there are business assistance, training assistance, market creation assistance, assistance that is actually more abundant,” he said.

He also invited various related stakeholders to collaborate in realising this.

“We promise from the Directorate General of Corrections together with the Ministry of Social Affairs, Insha Allah, to collaborate with Imipas (Ministry of Immigration and Corrections) to strive for the presence of social security, especially BPJS Premium Assistance Recipients for inmates throughout Indonesia,” revealed Rieke.