"In accordance with Law No. 13 of 2011 on Handling the Poor, regional governments must update the poverty data," she said in a written statement issued on Saturday.
"The process begins from village deliberation and then gradually rises up," she added.
Regional governments and officials up to the village level have full authority in determining who is and is not eligible for social aid, Rismaharini said.
"The Ministry of Social Affairs cannot do direct data collection, but it can determine data whose updating process is undertaken by regions," she said.
"Currently, I ratify data every month. In the first and second weeks, we wait for data from regions. The third week is for verification and the fourth week is for ratification," she informed.
According to Rismaharini, there are still district and city governments that are not actively updating the data, thus the data received by the ministry is not matching with the real conditions in regions.
"Poverty data is dynamic. There are those who have moved away, who have passed away, whose economic circumstances have improved so that they are no longer worthy of receiving aid," she said.
"Because of this, I have urged regional governments to truly assist in the data updation process," she added.
To encourage poverty data updation and improve the accuracy of social aid distribution, "suggestion" and "rebuttal" features have been added to the Cek Bansos application.
"With these features, people can participate in controlling the data update," the minister said.
"The people's participation is also important to improve the accuracy of the data update process, which helps the regional governments' job, in accordance with Law No. 13 of 2011," she added.
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Translator: Lintang B P, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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