Tempo.Co, Jakarta – The Public Housing Savings Management Agency, or BP Tapera, responded to ongoing public concerns that mandatory Tapera savings would be used to finance the development of the new capital city (IKN), Nusantara. Sugiyarto, Deputy Commissioner for Tapera Funds' Utilization, ensured that there was no allocation to finance the project.
"There is no connection whatsoever between Tapera participants' funds and IKN development," Sugiyarto said in an online discussion on Tuesday, June 11. "From our perception, the money that comes from the participants will only be used for and by the participants."
Last week, the director of the Center for Economic and Legal Studies (Celios), Bhima Yudhistira, said that Tapera funds could potentially be used to finance IKN projects. This is because public funds from Tapera are one of the easiest to obtain and be used to finance projects that are supposed to be funded by the state budget or APBN, "assuming that the IKN will still be financed by the APBN in the long run," Bhima said on Wednesday, June 5.
This financing mechanism, he explained, would be done by investing public funds in government bonds. After that, the government can use public funds to finance various APBN projects. "One of them would be the IKN."
The Tapera controversy emerged following President Jokowi's signing of PP 21/2024 on the implementation of Tapera. The regulation, a revision of PP 25/2020, mandates a 3 percent cut in wages for private or self-employed workers.
The policy has sparked outcry from various groups, including workers at Indonesia's Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) area who are members of the Mining Industry Workers Union or SBIPE IMIP. SBIPE IMIP President Henry Foord Jebss said he wasn't convinced that the contributions to Tapera would ever be returned to the workers.
His doubt stems from the many cases of difficulty in claiming BPJS Employment contribution benefits. Henry suspects that cutting private workers' salaries for Tapera is just the government's way of collecting citizens' hard-earned income. "We suspect that this is the government's way of covering the deficit in the government's revenue and expenditure budget," Henry told Tempo on May 28. "This [program] has no benefits for the workers."