Govt’s wage subsidy: laid-off employees will not receive; Kadin highlights minimum number of employees to receive subsidy

Last updated on May 6th, 2021 at 07:09 am

The government through the Ministry of Manpower will provide subsidies to private employees who have registered with the Social Security Administration Body for Employment or BPJS Ketenagakerjaan (BP Jamsostek) starting next September 2020.

As informed, the government will run a salary subsidy program for private employees with wages below IDR 5 million per month.

The scheme, a salary subsidy of Rp. 600,000 per month for four months or a total of Rp. 2.4 million, will be given every two months. So, in one disbursement, workers will receive a subsidy of Rp 1.2 million.

The terms and conditions for subsidy recipients are private employees participating in BP Jamsostek who are still active, with wages below IDR 5 million per month, based on wage data that is reported and recorded in BPJS Ketenagakerjaan.

How about the BP Jamsostek salary subsidy for private employees who have already been terminated?

Deputy Director for Public Relations and Inter-Agency BPJS Ketenagakerjaan, Irvansyah Utoh Banja, explained that the criteria for receiving a salary subsidy program or Wage Subsidy Assistance are active participants.

In other words, Rp. 600,000 assistance for private employees only applies to those whose membership fees are still being paid by the company.

Meanwhile, for private employees who were laid off, companies no longer pay dues to BP Jamsostek.

“If the participants are already inactive on June 30, of course, they will not be able to receive this Wage Subsidy Assistance,” confirmed Utoh, Tuesday, August 11.

Another requirement is that the company where they work is not a state-owned company or a civil servant. Then workers who are Indonesian citizens are proven by their Single Identity Number (NIK).

It is known that the government has budgeted Rp 37.74 trillion for the subsidy program for workers affected by Covid-19.

President Director of BP Jamsostek, Agus Susanto, said that currently, the government is finalizing the scheme, mechanism, and criteria for recipients of the salary subsidy program or Wage Subsidy Assistance using preliminary data from BP Jamsostek and other state institutions as the basis.

BP Jamsostek is also in the process of collecting participant account numbers that meet the criteria through branch offices throughout Indonesia.

The government will also re-validate the Rp. 600,000 assistance data for private employees submitted by BP Jamsostek, to ensure this assistance is right on target.

Regarding the provision of subsidized assistance of 600 thousand for employees with salaries below 5 million, the HR departments is encouraged to register recipient bank accounts.

On the other hand, the General Chair of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), Rosan P. Roeslani, suggested that the salary subsidy that the government will distribute does not consider the number of employees the company has. He responded to the government’s plan to subsidize salaries to companies with at least 300 employees.

The reason is, according to Rosan, it is more ideal if the subsidies to be distributed are said to have to consider the impact of Covid-19 on a company.

Therefore, Rosan proposed provisions for providing subsidies based on the level of impact of Covid-19 on a company.

The government has previously added to the beneficiaries of salary assistance for workers or BLT workers. The number of prospective recipients increased to 15,725,232 people from the previous 13,870,496 people.