The Ministry of Education and Culture has been assigned to distribute Smart Indonesia Cards (also known as KIP) to disadvantaged students.
Minister Muhadjir Effendy stated, “The KIP distribution this year will prioritize data verification.” In addition, they aim “to match the ministry’s data with the integrated database.”
Early this year, President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo issued an order to organize all of Indonesia’s social aid data. Agencies such as the Ministry of Education and Culture, Ministry of Social Affairs, National Statistic Agency and Ministry of Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration all have respective social aid databases.
The existence of a number of databases caused confusion in social aid distribution. Some KIP cards were erroneously distributed, as some data were inaccurate.
See: Jokowi Pushes For Aggressive Education Inclusion
As an example, the education minister recalled an incident in which a school dropout received a KIP card. This beneficiary was already married when the cards were distributed and was therefore not qualified to receive KIP cards.
Because of the errors in issuing the social aid cards, the minister set up a more accurate distribution system. He decided that the government should assign schools as the main distributors of the KIP cards.
The minister hopes that restricting the distribution in the education sector will ensure better targeting and serve those who need social welfare the most.
The Smart Indonesia Card allocation is one of President Jokowi’s strategies in narrowing social inequality in the country. He has expressed in his first Cabinet meeting for 2017 that he, along with his ministers, should “work as hard as we can.”
Image credits: GovInsider, Twitter
