Who says SBY doesn't care about the peasants? He's getting ready to hand out US$1.55 million to 19.1 million households (or 76.4 million people) of the nation's poor to offset the forthcoming fuel price increases. During the first phase of this scheme, each household will receive Rp100,000 per month until December. Dire threats have been issued against "any officials found to be hindering the flow of funds to rightful recipients" but as usual this will be a relatively common practice. Typically, some of this amount will be cut by the distributing official, let's say Rp20,000. If the recipient complains then some bureaucratic impediment will be invented to stop any money being paid at all.
Many genuinely poor people don't qualify because they don't have the necessary documentation. The documentation costs money and so it's a Catch 22. Even those poor who do manage to get the full amount will find that it doesn't go far. Eventually the handouts will stop altogether, so it's only a temporary expedient at best. People are hurting and it's interesting that The Jakarta Post, that sad excuse for a national daily, carries very little news coverage of the real impact this is having. From other reliable sources, I've heard that suicide rates caused by financial stress are soaring but statistics on this are hard to come by. Crime rates are climbing as well and again there's very little coverage given to this. I guess they don't want to be seen to be panicking the expats.
Many genuinely poor people don't qualify because they don't have the necessary documentation. The documentation costs money and so it's a Catch 22. Even those poor who do manage to get the full amount will find that it doesn't go far. Eventually the handouts will stop altogether, so it's only a temporary expedient at best. People are hurting and it's interesting that The Jakarta Post, that sad excuse for a national daily, carries very little news coverage of the real impact this is having. From other reliable sources, I've heard that suicide rates caused by financial stress are soaring but statistics on this are hard to come by. Crime rates are climbing as well and again there's very little coverage given to this. I guess they don't want to be seen to be panicking the expats.
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