The Ministry of Social Affairs has added the “propose” and “withdraw” features to the ‘Cek Bansos’ mobile application to improve accuracy in identifying target recipients for social aid and encourage the improvement of poverty data.
According to Social Affairs Minister Tri Rismaharini, the activation of the two features is a breakthrough in handling data problems when there are people who are eligible to receive aid, there are people who did not get the aid (exclusion error), and there are also people not meeting the criteria who received the aid (inclusion error).
“With this feature, the public can participate in controlling data updates. Community involvement can also accelerate the renewal process so that it helps the task of local governments because in accordance with Law No. 13 of 2011 concerning Handling the Poor, data updates are under the authority of local governments,” the minister said at the ‘Virtual Dissemination of Cek Bansos Application’ event, according to a statement received here on Tuesday.
She underlined that the addition of the two features does not mean negating the local government’s authority. “It can be a control tool (to guard) from possible inaccuracies in determining the aid recipients. This is what the local governments need,” she said.
Meanwhile, Special Staff to the Social Affairs Minister for Human Resources Development and Ministry Programs, Suhadi Lili, said that according to Law no. 13/2011, poor people have the right to propose their names for assistance. These features are an implementation of the mandate of the law so that residents who were previously not free to propose their names for various reasons can be accommodated, he explained.
As a mandate from the law, community participation is a choice that must be made in the distribution of social aid, he said.
Community participation is also crucial because of the large amount of data that must be managed and the strategic role of the data itself, which functions as a reference for various support programs for the poor, he added.
Source: Antara News