President Joko Widodo officially launched the Healthy Family Card yesterday (3/11) to support his policy on the implementation of cashless payment system. Prior to this, the distribution of social assistance will later be done via phone numbers which acts as an account where people save their money without the necessity of getting in line.
According to Detik.com (3/11), this social assistance is the next level of the Social Expansion and Acceleration Program which was designed by the former government through the implementation of Social Protection Card. In this regard, the owners of the card are allowed to exchange their card with the Prosperous Family Card, Smart Indonesia Card, Healthy Indonesia Card, and Mandiri E-Cash SIM Card which contains e-money.
The activated SIM card will later function as an account for the distribution of the Rp 200 thousands Prosperous Family Saving. To disburse the money, the card owners only need to choose the available menu to get the verification code. The code should later be submitted to designated post office before the users can disburse the money.
This process indeed makes the process much faster and easier, since users don’t have to get in line to get the money, not to mention the fact that they will no longer be dependent to banks and ATMs.
“Through the LKD, the government also provides security and convenience to beneficiaries. After receiving the card with the e-money, people don’t have to queue up to get the fund, because the fund will be sent directly to their account. Moreover, they also don’t need to cash the fund directly, meaning that it will be much more secure for them,” Bambang Widianto, TNP2K’s Executive Secretary, stated in Menkokesra.go.id (3/11).
In advance, government will distribute the card gradually to 15,5 million poor families all over Indonesia. This will mark the implementation of the Healthy Indonesia Program.
Mandiri E-Cash had previously been trialed in the distribution of assistance to the victims of Sinabung incident, which was done through a digital finance service provider in South Tugu, Koja, North Jakarta. The trial was done by Bank Indonesia, Ministry of Social, Bappenas, Ministry of Finance, and TNP2K.
[Illustration: Shutterstock]
