Manpower Minister Urges BPJS Ketenagakerjaan to Expand Its Scope of Membership

Jakarta, InfoPublik – Manpower Ministry keeps urging the Workers Social Security Agency (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan) to develop and expand its membership for Indonesia is entering the transtitional period from informal economy to formal economy.

It was stated by Manpower Minister Muhammad Hanif Dhakiri in his speech during the event of the singing of Memorandum of Understanding and Letter of Agreement on the Implementation of Workers Social Security Program for Non-Civil Servant Employees and Program Support Employees in Jakarta, Monday (1/23). 

“During the transformation process, we keep on urging BPJS to develop and expand its membership for both wage-earner employees and non-wage-earner employees,” said Hanif.

He added that the higher the level of formal economy of a nation the higher the participation in social protection scheme will be. Indonesia is currently facing a major challenge to push the concept of universal coverage to cover every Indonesian citizen could in a scheme of social security or social protection.

He explained that there are 170 thousand non-civil cervant village officials and about 30 thousand national village assistants. “It means, there are 200 thousand potentials that could be optimized by the signing of this MoU today. The multiplier effect would also be great”, he said. 

Hanif continued that the Manpower Ministry is ready to support the cooperation between village ministry and BPJS Ketenagakerjaan to have more initiatives and to develop creativity in order to promote membership optimization of BPJS Ketenagakerjaan. The more employees joining BPJS Ketenagakerjaan, the less social risk to face. 

In addition, Hanif also agreed that currently Indonesia still faces three classic problems of poverty, social inequality, and unemployement. Though statistically the number decreases, the problems still become the nation’s obstacles and challenges.

Poverty decreased from 11.1 percent to 10.8 percent. Social inequality decreased from 0.41 percent to 0.39 percent. Unemployement decreased from 6.18 percent to 5.6 percent. Hanif said that the recent number of unemployement is the lowest since Indonesia entered reformation era. (Translator: Erik Limantara)