Jakarta – After the chaos that met the first disbursement of the government's cash assistance program in October, the first day of the second disbursement went off without a hitch on Monday.
Some 94,809 low-income families in Jakarta were slated to receive the money that the government allocated to help the poor cope with the fuel price increases, Jakarta Central Statistics Agency (BPS) chief Sanusi Sarwono said on Monday.
"We are still disbursing the money according to previous data," he was quoted by Detikcom as saying.
The agency recorded 8,080 poor families in South Jakarta, 23,871 families in East Jakarta, 17,771 families in Central Jakarta, 19,388 families in West Jakarta, 24,908 families in North Jakarta and 791 families in the Seribu Islands.
Among 14 criteria used to measure whether a household is classified as poor are the family income and expenditures on health services, food and clothing.
If a family meets at least eight of the criteria, then it is entitled to receive Rp 100,000 monthly to help offset the effects of the recent fuel price increases, distributed every three months.
The first disbursement of the cash was for the October to December period. However, there have been numerous reports that thousands of the aid cards – needed to claim the money – had fallen into the hands of people who do not qualify for the program, including civil servants.
BPS Jakarta admitted it made errors, saying that the office had been checking over the initial data and found that many families and neighborhood unit heads falsified their data.
Unlike the first disbursement, however, long lines of people lined up at post offices – the designated centers for fund disbursement – were absent.
"Because there has been no overly long lines there was no need for extra security," the South Jakarta Post Office's quality control supervisor SMR Sitompul said.
He said that the post office would distribute Rp 2.5 billion in cash to its 31 branch offices in South Jakarta. "The biggest disbursement will be in Tebet Barat for 1,159 families, and the smallest in Astek Guntur Summitmas Tower for nine families," Sitompul said.
The Kebayoran Lama Post Office also saw no special increase in activity on Monday. "Today we gave service to only two people every 10 minutes, there have been no long queues, everything is relatively quiet," Kebayoran Lama Post Office head Sumi said at his office on Jl. Ciputat Raya in South Jakarta.
The post office had received Rp 33.6 million (about US$3,428) to be distributed to 112 families in Kebayoran Lama.
PT Pos Indonesia has appointed 22 branch offices in Central Jakarta as distribution points for the fund, 10 in South Jakarta, eight in West Jakarta, eight in North Jakarta, and 33 in East Jakarta.