Gov’t Provides Additional Cash Assistance in Priority Regencies to Accelerate Extreme Poverty Eradication

By : Nata Kesuma | Thursday, October 07 2021 - 23:00 IWST

Vice President Ma’ruf Amin leads a Coordination Meeting on Extreme Poverty Eradication in Central Java province (Photo by: Vice President Secretariat’s Press, Media, and Information Bureau)

INDUSTRY.co.id - In a bid to eradicate extreme poverty by the end of 2024, the Government has set a target to speed up poverty eradication in respective five regencies from seven priority provinces this year.

To that end, the Government will administer Cash Social Assistance (BST) to beneficiaries in the regencies using the existing data of the beneficiary family from Ministry of Social Affairs.

Given the remaining time left in 2021, the Government will disburse more additional assistances through the staple food program and the village fund direct cash assistance to help extreme vulnerable groups in five priority regencies, according to Vice President Ma’ruf Amin while leading a Coordination Meeting on Extreme Poverty Eradication on Thursday (07/10) in Semarang, Central Java province.

On that occasion, the Vice President underscored that it is important to continue revising and updating the data of the beneficiaries so that the data will be more accurate and the implementation of the program from next year until 2024 can run well and properly.

Furthermore, Vice President Maruf said that the Government will once again prioritize empowerment programs starting next year in order to improve the extreme vulnerable groups’ productivity and capacity.

Therefore, the Vice President ordered all ranks of the regional governments in Central Java province to conduct a research and analysis on the needs of the acceleration of the extreme poverty eradication programs, adding that, he also called for measures to carry out collaboration between the Central Government and regional governments so that the programs will yield maximum benefit to all people.

For the record, the total number of extreme vulnerable people in Central Java province in 2021 reached 581,968people that spread across five regencies including Brebes regency with an extreme poverty rate of 10.34percent or 197,520 people, Pemalang regency with an extreme poverty rate of 9.52 percent or 124,270 people,Banyumas regency with an extreme poverty rate of 6.83 percent or 116,330 people, Kebumen regency with anextreme poverty rate of 7.68 percent or 92,190 people, and Banjarnegara regency with an extreme poverty rateof 7.23 percent or 67,010 people.