Hendartyo Hanggi, Dio Suhenda (Intern Translator), Jakarta – West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil has expressed his concerns over the inflating number of social aid recipients, as it has increased from 25 to 63 percent.

"From 9 million to 38 million people. This indicator is a bit of a concern," Ridwan said in a virtual discussion, on Wednesday, May 13, 2020.

According to Ridwan, the West Java Provincial Government has a budget of Rp 11.8 trillion for social aid. However, a number of problems have also been encountered in the distribution of social aid, such as invalid or incomplete data.

"Some have died and some have prospered; which has resulted in us continuing to update the data and requiring time," he said.

Secondly, the West Java Government is also encountering duplication of data. Specifically, Ridwan pointed out a case where one citizenship ID number (NIK) is used by nine different names. Thirdly, a number of data have also been found to be inaccurate and are yet to be updated.

Fourth, Ridwan Kamil stated that the data of social aid recipients remain overlapping. In addition, Ridwan continued, there were problems with computing.

As the data recapitulation processing cannot be done conventionally using Excel, due to the amount of data exceeding 1 million rows and columns, recapitulation of data now requires the use of scientific data methods.

Ridwan added that the West Java Government is preparing eighth distribution channels for the 9.3 million families set to be recipients of social aid, as according to the latest data.

"If there is only one channel, it can be under one command. Now, we have to divide it into eight channels, who will be stationed at the first channel and who will be stationed at the eighth; it's not simple," he remarked.

Source: https://en.tempo.co/read/1341798/concerns-over-west-java-as-aid-recipient-inflates-to-38-million