COVID-19 Conditions, Social Minister Asks PKH HR to Keep Working Hard

JAKARTA (10 July 2020) – Family Hope Program (PKH) facilitators throughout Indonesia are still faced with difficult conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are still required to work hard to carry out their duties as the frontline in ensuring that social assistance (bansos) to Beneficiary Families (KPM) is right on target.

"This is an abnormal condition, the task of the PKH Facilitator must not stop as the frontline who is directly related to KPM, but also has to make sure he is healthy and not exposed to COVID-19," said the Minister of Social Affairs, Juliari P. Batubara, during the Technical Coordination and Improvement activity. The quality of PKH human resources in West Bandung Regency, some time ago.

The Minister of Social Affairs said that in the midst of a pandemic, everything became difficult for assistants in the field. "Not to mention, there are residents who have lost their income due to being affected by COVID-19 and were not previously included in the data for PKH and BPNT recipients," he added.

For this reason, he asked PKH HR, starting from the Assistants, District Coordinators (Korkab)/City Coordinators (Korkot), Regional Coordinators (Koreg), Regional Coordinators (Korwil) to Social Workers Supervisors, to improve the quality of KPM assistance in their regions respectively.

Moreover, the Minister of Social Affairs said that PKH received very serious attention from the President. Therefore, the success of the program depends on the performance of the facilitators in the field.

“You are the spearhead of PKH. This PKH will not be successful without all of you, but if the assistants are reluctant, don't take their work seriously, then it will not be successful (PKH)," said the Minister of Social Affairs to all PKH human resources.

Not only the role of PKH HR, Juliari also reminded the Regional Government to continue to coordinate with the Central Government, in this case the Ministry of Social Affairs (Kemensos), for the success of distributing social assistance, especially regarding recipient data.

"No matter how good the program is, if the coordination in the regions is not good, the program will be difficult to succeed. Now, the field officers assigned to verify and validate the Integrated Social Welfare Data (DTKS), one of them is the PKH Facilitator," he said.

From January to July 2020, he continued, around Rp. 3.7 trillion had been disbursed for the program. He stated that the realization could not be smooth if the coordination with the regions was not good.

"Therefore, coordination to the regions needs to continue to be improved so that the absorption of aid and budget can also be fast, in accordance with the wishes of the President," said the Minister of Social Affairs.