Minister of Social Affairs Attends to National Coordination Meeting of Public Relations 2019

JAKARTA (August 21, 2019) – The Social Affairs Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita encouraged all government’s public relations to adapt the contemporary public relations’ characteristic, which was more participative, along with its function to connect the government’s importance with the public.

The Minister said, in addition to program dissemination, the government’s public relations must be enabled to educate and adaptively interact with the public.

“However, at the same moment, it can do counter narrative, especially towards the hoax which evolves in the public,” he said on his speech in the “National Coordination Meeting of Public Relations with Provincial Government 2019”, in Jakarta, Wednesday (21/08/2019).

The Social Affairs Minister said, this era was the time where had a good and right work was not enough. Publication was needed so the people could understand and feel the program’s benefit, which means that they felt the country’s presence.

The Minister reminded that, at this time, with the Internet’s progress, communication could run quickly without knowing the physics, space and time limitations. The current communication era was noticed with the appearance of new public space, which was the participative cyberspace.

Therefore, the Minister pointed out that publications and social welfare development news was not understand only on support mobilization towards the conventional mass media, but also included the social and online media.

“On the industry revolution 4.0, the information’s movement moves quickly. How to take the benefit from this development is important for us to pay attention to it. This has to be realized by both the central and local government’s public relations,” said the Social Affairs Minister.

Strengthening the public relations’ synergy was also important, said the Minister, along with the high dynamics and challenge’s complexity to accelerate the social welfare development agenda. “The main point is on public communication, which becomes the key to the success of the government's performance,” said the Minister.

“There are 26 kinds of Social Welfare Service Recipients (PPKS) who have to be served together. So, I am thinking that there are enough reasons for central and local governments to synergize or work together in strengthening the publication aspects of social welfare development programs,” said the Minister.

The publication strengthened the urgency, said the Social Affairs Minister, along with the trend of increased budget of the Ministry of Social Affairs especially on social protection.

“In 2015, the MoSA’s Budget is IDR22.455,120,265,000. In 2018, it is increase to IDR43,393,136,929,000, and in 2019 it increases to IDR58,966,502,006,000,” said the Minister.

The increases of social assistance’s budget, according to the Social Affairs Minister, needed to be supervised by the public, including by mass media. With paid attention to the public’s input, could improve the government’s performance.

“Including distributed assistance can fulfill the principle. It is 6T, which is on target, time, amount, administration, price, and quality,” the Minister added.

Another reason for the importance of central government’s collaboration and synergy, he said, was based on the distribution of the Ministry of Social Affairs’ partial authority to the Local Government through the deconcentration budget and special allocation budget.

In the same opportunity, the Secretary General Hartono Laras stated that this activity was meant to realize the integration in information, publication and news on Local Social Welfare Development.

“It is expected from this national coordination meeting, that more massive and substantial social welfare program publication can be held; there is availability for more significant allocation budget in the local area for publication activity, improvement of social welfare development news’s quality and quantity in the local area,” said Hartono.

The National Coordination Meeting’s participants consisted of 34 Heads of Provincial Government Public Relations Bureau, 34 Secretary of Social Service, 6 persons from Work Unit 1 of Public Relations officials in The Ministry of Social Affairs and 20 persons from Public Relations Bureau’s Staffs.

The National Coordination Meeting presented the Director General of Social Rehabilitation, Director General of Social Empowerment, Director General of Social Security and Protection, Director General of Poverty Handling, and Acting Director General of Information and Communication from The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

Head of Public Relations Bureau of Ministry of Social Affairs Republic of Indonesia
Sonny W Manalu