Nine Billion Rupiah Allocated in Health Insurance for Semarang Poor
Monday, 22 September, 2008 | 13:48 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Semarang: The Semarang Municipal government will allocate Rp9 billion in its revised regional budget for health insurance for poor people between September and December this year.

This allocation is considered extremely important in order to be able to provide free medical treatment for poor people not on the central government’s health insurance recipient list.

The revised budget will be discussed by the council on Wednesday (24/9) this week.

“If this is for the people, we will approve it,” said Ahmadi, Head of the Health Commission at the Semarang Regional House of Representatives (DPRD) yesterday (21/9).

He mentioned that the number of poor people keeps increasing every year and that around 30 percent of people living in Semarang are classified as poor people.

Ahmadi said that data from the central government about the number of poor people in Semarang was not accurate.

According to the Semarang Electronic Database Office, the amount of health insurance recipients are only 306,700 people while there are still another 192,285 poor people.

Ahmadi asked the government to validate its data as soon as possible.

Tatik Suryati, Head of the Semarang Health Regional Office, said they already have had the data about poor people who were not on the central government's list.

“This data comes from community coordinators,” she said.

The data is distributed to twelve reference hospitals for poor people, including Tugu Hospital, Permata Medika Hospital, Pantiwiloso Hospital, Dr Karyadi Hospital and Tlogosari Hospital.

ROFIUDDIN