Village Ministry Forms Village Volunteers to Combat COVID-19

Minister of Villages, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration and Minister of Social Affairs accompany Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture on a press conference, Friday (8/5).

Village Fund can be utilized for social safety nets in the health sector as well as for economic security, Minister of Villages, Disadvantaged Regions, and Transmigration Abdul Halim Iskandar has said.

“In the health sector, we formed COVID-19 Village Response, it manages the formation of village volunteers to combat COVID-19 with

the spirit of mutual cooperation,” the Minister said at a press conference, Friday (8/5).

For economic security, Abdul Halim said, it is manifested in the form of Village Cash Labor Intensive Program, issued in Circular Number 8 of 2020 and Circular Number 11 of 2020.

“According to the President’s directive, Village Fund should also be reallocated for Cash Transfer Assistance,” the Minister said.

The recipients of the Cash Transfer Assistance, Abdul Halim stated,  are underprivileged villagers who have lost their livelihoods because of COVID-19 and have not received any assistance from the Government.

“So they have not received any assistance from the Family Hope Program, Non-Cash food assistance, and all forms of social safety net policies,” he said, adding that family with members bearing chronic illness will also receive it, due to the vulnerability of underlying medical conditions to COVID-19.

Village volunteers will gather data of villagers who have lost their livelihoods, the Minister said. At least three volunteers are needed in each neighborhood unit for the purpose of validating the inclusion of the recipient’s name. The data will then be taken to the special village meeting to verify and validate.

“This is important so that no parties feel unwelcomed to discuss and decide who is entitled to receive the village cash transfer assistance. After the recipient list is formed in the meeting, the Village Head will issue it,” the Minister stated, adding that the list will be synchronized in the regency to avoid overlapping.

The Minister underlined that this assistance must be adequate and precisely targeted. He reminded that there should be no overlapping in recipients.

All regional heads, the Minister said, are expected to accelerate the data synchronization to increase the speed of the distribution of the cash assistance.

Today, the Minister stated, there are 53,783 villages (72%) that already formed village volunteers. In total there are 1.505.419 volunteers in Indonesia. Meanwhile, there 39,199 villages that have set up village guard posts and gathered data on the homecoming of migrants which number reduced after the ban of the homecoming.

Furthermore, there are 27,062 villages that had collected data for village cash assistance, while 24,309 villages have allocated the Village Fund for cash assistance. As of Friday (8/5), as many as 10,000 villages in 80 regencies/municipalities have disbursed the cash assistance. (FID/EN)

Translated by: Fairuzzamani Inayatillah
Reviewed by: Lulu Wuliarti