Vice President: Benefits of TNP2K for Social Assistance Policies

11 February 2015

Poverty reduction is a multifaceted issue that takes into account various factors, including economic, health, education, housing and infrastructure. As such, Presidential Decree Number 15 of 2010 on Accelerating Poverty Reduction established the National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K), which is chaired by the Vice President. "This institution captures all data, so our efforts are not wasted,” said Vice President Jusuf Kalla during a visit to the Office of the Secretariat of TNP2K, which sits across from the Vice President’s Palace on Tuesday, 10 February 2015.

The Vice President asked that technical ministries benefit fully from TNP2K when developing policies linked to social assistance and poverty reduction by using integrated data, so that policies taken focus more on targeting. “No more data that is different, it is enough to update the data that can be accessed by all ministries," he said.

The Vice President was accompanied by the Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture Puan Maharani, Minister for the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) Andrinof Chaniago and the Ministry for Social Affairs Khofifah Indar Parawansa. If government institutions require data on poverty, the Vice President said, then simply make a request to TNP2K to supply data based on the required category. “Request Raskin, wait for the category, then out will come the results," he said.

According to the Vice President, the data needed to create policies is extremely important and needs to be updated constantly. As such, agencies no longer need to build individual data centres for poverty reduction efforts. "Take [the data] from here," he said.

After the visit, the Vice President said that TNP2K as an institution will be maintained as it has a strategic role and importance in renewing poverty data. “[TNP2K] will be continued, given its benefits in updating data,” said the Vice President, responding to questions from journalists.

Government Kitchen

On the readiness of TNP2K to assist the government in policymaking, TNP2K’s Executive Secretary Bambang Widianto said: "The kitchen is to help [the Vice President] in his duties." Widianto also serves as Deputy Secretary to the Vice President on People's Welfare and Poverty Reduction.

In his presentation, Widianto explained the Unified Database (BDT) is used as the basis of social assistance programmes. He added that TNP2K synchronised data with the Population Administration (Adminduk), which is owned by the Ministry of Home Affairs. “Our data is now complete, and includes population administrative data, Identification Number (NIK) and so on," said Widianto.

Furthermore, Widianto explained that TNP2K’s regional partners are Regional Poverty Reduction Coordination Teams (TKPKD), chaired by Deputy Regional Heads, Deputy Provincial Governors, Deputy Regents at the district level and Deputy Mayors at the municipal level.

Source: wapresri.go.id