When her husband lost his factory job due to the pandemic, 32-year-old homemaker Siti Mukhayyana tapped into her hidden entrepreneurial skills to become a sausage seller at a market in her home village of Kwangsan, East Java.

But her income – combined with her husband’s new waitressing job - wasn’t enough to support her family of three children. Her husband’s job as a waiter paid him IDR 1.2 million (USD 83) per month, or less than a quarter of the local minimum salary of IDR 4.2 million (USD 293). Her sausage business also struggled with poor sales due to the market’s intermittent opening hours, particularly during the government-mandated physical distancing measures to mitigate the pandemic.

The pandemic has added an additional burden on the family who has had to bear the extra costs for the children’s online schooling on data provider and handphones.  Much of the communities in Mukhayyana’s home village have also lost due to the pandemic, hence relying help on her extended families and neighbors was out of the question.

This is where the government’s funding support on the pandemic came to the family’s rescue.

A few months into the pandemic, Siti’s husband was informed that he qualified for the Village Fund Cash Assistance Program (BLT-DD), a government scheme which aims to support vulnerable households affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of December 2020, he had received a total of IDR 2.7 million from the programme.

The money has helped the family cope with the COVID-19 crisis and to pay their bills, particularly for the children’s online schooling. It also helps her covering the operational costs of her simple sausage-selling business.

UNDP, supported by MPTF, has conducted a study on BLT-DD to evaluate targeting efficiency of the program. It provides recommendations to ensure a more inclusive process at the local and community levels.

The BLT-DD program also targets people with disabilities as the beneficiaries. The program works with local community groups such as Jetis Berdaya Group which has assisted a young man with disabilities to join Community-Owned Enterprises (BUMMas) activities on recycling and agriculture.  

These efforts continue to optimize the social protection programmes and accelerate poverty reduction.

The Indonesian government kicked off its massive vaccination drive on 13 January, with a planned goal of administering two million doses of Covid-19 vaccine per day. The country aims to create a herd immunity by vaccinating two thirds of its population, or around 181.5 million people. Indonesia’s Minister of Health has been quoted as saying that the government aims to achieve the herd immunity by November[1].

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[1] https://www.cnbcindonesia.com/tech/20210705175553-37-258463/prediksi-menkes-herd-immunity-covid-ri-tercapai-november