Erwida Maulia, Jakarta – Six weeks after the government's direct cash assistance scheme was launched, only 13.8 percent of the 19 million families targeted have received their aid.
PT Pos Indonesia's director for financial services Arief Supriyono said Friday that only 119 of the country's 440 regency and municipal administrations had distributed the aid.
The state postal company was assigned to hand out the cash under the scheme designed to offset the effects of the fuel price rise announced in May. Under the program, each eligible poor family is meant to receive Rp 100,000 (US$11) for each month between June and December.
As of Friday morning, cash from the program had reached only about 2.62 million families, with Rp 787.3 billion of the total Rp 13.31 trillion earmarked for the program disbursed.
Planning bureau head at the Social Services Ministry Mu'man Nuryana blamed the local governments for the sluggish rate. "They opted to wait for a conducive situation to disburse the cash aid and needed time to verify which families were eligible," he said.
Regional administrations are not supposed to conduct verification, which is the job of the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), he added.
Mu'man said the central government would push the local administrations to complete the first stage of the aid distribution by September.
BPS verification will take place between September and October, with the results to be used for a number of other government programs to help those in poverty, including the health insurance scheme for the poor (Jamkesmas), School Operational Aid (BOS) and rice for the poor (Raskin).
The government started distributing the direct cash aid to poor families as soon as it reduced its fuel subsidy and increased the fuel price by an average 30 percent on May 24.
The government is distributing the aid in two stages. The first phase, in which the families receive Rp 300,000 at once, was originally scheduled to conclude in August. The second, the accumulation of the September-December payments, is scheduled to begin in September, with each family receiving Rp 400,000.
The program has already been marked by controversy, with many people protesting their exclusion from the list of eligible poor families, whereas many families above the poverty line have received cash.
The confusion was the result of the use of 2005 BPS data, whereas local governments have updated their own data. The regional administrations then decided to verify the data to avoid community conflicts and protests.
Jakarta recorded the highest rate of program completion, with 94.3 percent of targeted families having received the cash aid. Central Kalimantan and Maluku are the only provinces that have yet to distribute any cash.