RI targets 48 million families for digital social assistance

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Indonesia's Ministry of Social Affairs is targeting half of Indonesia's population, or around 48 million families, to be registered in the digital social assistance system (Perlinsos).

Expert Staff to the Social Affairs Minister Andy Kurniawan said in Jakarta on Wednesday that as of now, 5.7 million people have registered on the digital Perlinsos platform.

"As of today, 5.7 million people have registered on digital Perlinsos. Our target is for half of Indonesia's population to be registered on digital Perlinsos, or around 48 million families, eventually reaching the entire population," he said.

Kurniawan said the registration of these 5.7 million people had been supported by the deployment of around 298,000 Perlinsos agents drawn from various segments of society.

This large-scale involvement of agents is considered crucial to reach vulnerable residents at the lowest national socio-economic level who are not proficient in using smartphones, so that no poor residents are left out of the social assistance distribution database.

"In the past, if there was a question about why two equally poor people, one did not receive social assistance, the simple answer was because that person was not in the data. Through this digital Perlinsos, we want to reduce that exclusion error," he said.

If the socialization and strengthening of instruments proceed smoothly, the ministry projected that the full digital social assistance distribution scheme for the Family Hope Program (PKH) and staple food aid (BPNT) can be realized starting in early 2027, going directly to beneficiaries.

Kurniawan explained that this new distribution model offers two main advantages, namely greater speed and targeting accuracy.

In terms of speed, beneficiaries can nominate their personal bank accounts directly, without having to wait for the lengthy collective account opening process.

Meanwhile, in terms of accuracy, he stressed that recipient eligibility does not depend solely on the decile criteria of the National Single Socio-Economic Data (DTSEN) from Statistics Indonesia (BPS).

Instead, eligibility is automatically confirmed by a system connected to administrative data from seven agencies, including the National Police Traffic Corps for vehicle ownership and the National Land Agency (BPN) for land certificates.

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Translator: Prasetyo, Kenzu
Editor: Bayu Prasetyo
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