Gov’t to Continue Pre-Employment Card Program in 2023

President Jokowi meets with Alumni of Pre-Employment Card Program from all over Indonesia at SICC Bogor, West Java province, Friday (06/17). (Photo by: PR/Rahmat)

The Government revealed plan to continue the Pre-Employment Card program in 2023.

The program will focus more on assistance to increase skills and productivity of the workforce such as in the form of direct training costs assistance and post-training incentives.

“The Pre-Employment Card program will focus more on improving the competence of the workforce as it is the initial concept of the program when launched before the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto said as Chairperson of the Job Creation Committee during the Job Creation Committee meeting at his office in Jakarta, Monday (10/03).

In the meeting, the committee members agreed to start the normal scheme in 2023 and continue the semi-social assistance scheme until the end of the Q4 of 2022 with the same amount of training assistance and incentives as before.

“The Government will increase the budget by Rp5 trillion with a target of 1.5 million people,” Airlangga said.

Furthermore, the Coordinating Minister reminded all parties to start preparing and disseminating information to all stakeholders regarding all the changes considering that the normal scheme will soon be implemented in early 2023.

On the implementation of the normal scheme, the Government will adjust the amount of assistance, which is Rp4.2 million per person including a training fee assistance of Rp3.5 million, post-training incentive of Rp600,000 which will be given one time as well as a survey incentive of Rp100,000 for two surveys.

The program will be implemented online, offline, and both ways. It will allow the participants to also receive assistance from other ministries/institutions such as assistance from Ministry of Social Affairs, Wage Subsidy program, or Micro Business assistance.

In order to support the implementation of the normal scheme, the Job Creation Committee also requested cooperation and assistance from the Attorney General’s Office, the Finance and Development Supervisory Agency (BPKP), and the Indonesian National Police.

For the record, in 2022, the Pre-Employment Card program has provided benefits to 3.46 million recipients from 514 regencies/cities in Indonesia with a total recipient of 14.9 million since the beginning of the program. A total of 53.6 percent of the recipients this year came from 212 regencies/cities targeted for extreme poverty reduction and it includes prospective Indonesian migrant workers (PMI).

The Job Creation Committee was formed based on Presidential Regulation Number 36 of 2020 on the Development of Work Competencies through the Pre-Employment Card Program. It is tasked to formulate policies and control the Pre-Employment Card program. The committee also consists of Presidential Chief of Staff as the Vice Chairperson as well as Minister of Finance, Minister of National Development Planning/Head of the National Development Planning Agency, Minister of Manpower, Minister of Industry, Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, and Minister of Home Affairs as the members.

(PR of Coordinating Ministry For Economic Affairs/UN) (FI/MMB)