Cash Wage Subsidy Assistance for Official Workers Discontinued

Cash Wage Subsidy Assistance for Official Workers Discontinued - The government has stopped distributing wage subsidized direct cash assistance (BLT) alias BSU to employees earning under IDR 5 million this year. In his argument, the Minister of Manpower Ida Fauziyah stated that the BLT budget for wage assistance was not budgeted for in the 2021 State Budget.

Ida said this to the media after witnessing the signing of the MoU between the Medan Vocational Training Development Center (BBPLK) Directorate General of Binalattas and partners, associations/industry at BBPLK Medan, Saturday (30/1).

"We are still waiting, while indeed the 2021 state budget has not been or has not been allocated. Later, we will see how the economic situation will be, but it is not allocated in the 2021 State Budget," said Ida in the recording shared by the Ministry of Manpower's Public Relations Bureau.

However, Ida explained that several assistance programs for employees affected by the Covid-19 outbreak will still be continued this year. Although he did not specify the program in detail, he explained that the program was still running until the economic situation returned to normal.

The problem is that the Covid-19 outbreak has increased the number of unemployed to 9.77 million people as of August 2020. Therefore, according to him, several government programs are needed to help employees who have lost their jobs.

"Some of these programs will continue to run until things return to normal, they are intended to deal with the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak," he explained.

One of the programs for employees affected by Covid-19 which will continue this year is the Pre-Employment Card program.

Likewise, until now the Pre-Employment Card Implementing Management (PMO) has not opened registration for batch 12.

With regard to BLT wage assistance, the disbursement itself has not reached 100 % in January.

Ida had explained that the government had not disbursed BLT for employees earning under IDR 5 million to the 270,489 candidates who received it. This number is divided into 110,762 employees in the first term and 159,727 employees in the second term.

“Why wasn't 100 % distributed? We can explain, there are many triggers that have not been channeled," he said in a working meeting with the DPR's Commission IX.

At that time, the government had distributed BLT to 12.29 million employees in the first term. Furthermore, the total number of employees who received BLT in the second term was around 12.24 million people.

In terms of the budget, the total funds disbursed amounted to IDR 29.44 trillion or 98.91 % of the target of IDR 29.76 trillion. Divided into IDR 14.75 trillion in the first term and IDR 14.69 trillion in the second term.

Source : cnnindonesia.com