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President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration allocated Rp 20 trillion (US$1.4 million) to be
disbursed to 5.6 million participants who will receive Rp 600,000 monthly for four months and
Rp 150,000 after filling out the program’s survey.

Each recipient can also receive Rp 1 million to pay for various up-skilling courses, ranging from
marketing to fishing.

Though the KPK approved of the redesign, it also found some issues related to its management
and courses offered.

Since the first batch of online registrations in April, around 680,000 individuals have been
accepted to the preemployment card program as of May, out of a total of 9.4 million applicants.

KPK commissioner Alexander Marwata said the Manpower Ministry and the Workers Social
Security Agency (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan) had created a list of 1.7 million workers who were laid
off during the outbreak. The commission further found that only around 143,000 of them were
accepted in the preemployment card program.

The KPK’s deputy for corruption prevention, Pahala Nainggolan, said some of the targeted
individuals were senior citizens who were not proficient in using the internet. Meanwhile,
registration could only be done online.
The commission suggested that authorities contact laid-off workers listed by the Manpower
Ministry and the BPJS Ketenagakerjaan by telephone first, as they were the main target of the
program.

Alexander also questioned the Rp 30.8 billion allocated for facial recognition technology to verify
participants’ identities. He recommended that the government verify identities by cross-checking
participants’ citizen identification numbers with the Home Ministry’s Population and Civil
Registration rather than procure new technologies for such matters.
Alexander highlighted loopholes in the program as it had no control mechanism to check whether
participants had really attended and finished courses.

“Training institutions have already issued certificates for participants, even though they may not
have finished all their course packages yet,” Alexander said.

Participants will also receive monthly cash assistance of Rp 600,000, regardless of whether they
participated in any courses at all, potentially wasting Rp 1 million allocated for the courses.

The KPK urged the government to establish a control mechanism to guarantee that participants
took and finished their courses, such as by implementing interactive learning methods.

The antigraft body found after studying the list with the Indonesian Training Institute Association
and the Manpower Ministry that only around 250 of 1,895 offered courses fulfilled the standards
for online training.

Pahala said some courses taught basic skills that did not require a class at all or necessitate
face-to-face training sessions.

In the study, the KPK also found that 89 percent of 327 randomly picked courses were already
offered for free on other learning platforms such as prakerja.org, which was established to
challenge the preemployment card program.

Alexander urged the government to take out courses from the program that are being offered
for free on other platforms, as well as invite more competent parties to help curate the course.

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