Aid for Poor People to Be Disbursed in February
Thursday, 18 January, 2007 | 15:04 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The government will grant funds of Direct Aid for the General Public to 2,891 poor sub districts in early February 2007.

Each sub district will obtain between Rp500 million and Rp1.5 billion.

“Now, the government is still preparing the implementation,” said Sujan Royat, Deputy Coordinating Minister of People's Welfare on Coordinating Agency for Handling Poverty, yesterday (01/17) in Jakarta.

Direct Aid for the General Public is part of the National Program for Empowering People.

The program is an advancement on two programs for handling poverty which are based on people's empowerment: the Program for Developing Sub Districts and the Program for Handling Urban Poverty.

To carry out the program, the government has prepared budget of RP4.43 trillion.

Most of the budget (Rp3.62 trillion) will be taken from 2007 State Budget with the remainder contributed by the budget of each region that receives aid.

Th budget of Direct Aid for the General Public will be entirely utilized for implementing the community action plan program that consists of: facilities improvement; revolving funds for people's economic activities; and skill training.

In addition, 25 percent of the funds will be used for revolving funds that will be managed by women.

The mechanism of fund disbursement, said Sujana, will be done by the government through Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI).

After the funds are disbursed, people will set up empowerment programs that will adopt each region's needs.

“They will discuss and set the programs by themselves,' he said.

NININ DAMAYANTI