Markus Junianto Sihaloho – The main obstacle to the immediate passage of a long-awaited bill on social security is the government's reluctance to relinquish control of four lucrative state-owned insurers, a legislator said on Sunday.
Rieke Dyah Pitaloka, a member of the House of Representatives' special committee deliberating the bill on the Social Security Organizing Body, said the eight ministries involved in deliberations had yet to agree on a proposal to merge the four companies into one, called the BPJS, to manage social security.
"The ministries can't agree on the new structure of the BPJS," the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker said. "I think it's caused by the fact that they stand to lose control of the state-owned companies once they're merged into the BPJS."
She said the fact that the companies were each in charge of managing huge amounts of funding, which would slip out of the ministries' reach if the merger went through, was not lost on the House.
One of the companies, Jamsostek, which is in charge of insuring workers, managed Rp 98 trillion ($11.5 billion) in premiums in 2010, Rieke said. Two others – Asabri, which insures members of the armed forces, and Taspen, which covers civil servants – handle similar amounts of money, she said.
"But none of them is transparent enough to tell customers what they do with that money," Rieke said. "I have all the data that they've never published.
"How could they place their customers' money into Bank Century?" Rieke added, referring to the bank that was controversially bailed out in 2008 following massive embezzlement of customers' funds by bank executives.
By merging the state insurers into the BPJS, she went on, "the new management will run on clear regulations and will be transparent to the public."
Faisal Basri, an economist from the University of Indonesia, said the government was obliged to provide social security for all citizens.
He stressed that a social security system covering all citizens needed to be implemented immediately because it would insulate citizens from the negative implications of a progressively liberalized economic system.
Faisal added that universal coverage systems had already been in place in other countries for years now, meaning Indonesia had been left far behind.
He also criticized the government for treating social security as a heavy financial burden rather than an obligation. Such a system, he argued, could be started with only Rp 25 trillion in the first year, with progressively more funding made available over the next few years.
"I can't understand whyt he government has money to build a bridge over the Sunda Strait, but nothing for social security," he said.