The government has decided to not withdraw the excess incentives received by 8,961 health workers in the transfer process during the period from January to August 2021, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin stated.

“The decision we took with Indonesia’s Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) is to not take back the excess transfer but instead to compensate,” Sadikin remarked during a press conference at the BPK RI Building here on Monday.

According to the minister, the compensation mechanism was deliberated with BPK Chairman Agung Firman on grounds that the recipients of excess incentives were still working in the field of healthcare.

In future, Sadikin affirmed that the problem will be addressed with better financial governance through a financial system developed by the Ministry of Health.

“With the BPK’s supervision, we become more aware of the presence of incorrect and duplicated data. Hence, we will fix it,” he noted.

Sadikin has advised all health workers to not be apprehensive about the excess incentive funds.

BPK RI Chairman Agung Firman stated that the amount of incentive funds received by 8,961 health workers varied in amount from Rp178 thousand to Rp50 million per person.

Furthermore, the incentive recipients currently serve at hospitals of the government or private parties, Indonesian Defense Forces-National Police, or SOEs through budgeting in the ministry.

According to Firman, Indonesia’s BPK had found an overpayment of incentives for health workers due to a technical error during database collection from the incentive application managed by the Health Human Resources Development and Empowerment Agency (PPSDM).

To this end, the PPSDM Agency had overcompensated each health worker during the period from January 1 to August 19, 2021.

The BPK has recommended the health minister, through the PPSDM Agency, to process the remaining overpayment incentives as of September 2021.

For COVID-19 service facilities financed by the regional budget, such as hospitals and health centers, each local government rather than the Ministry of Health’s budget list had provided for the COVID-19 incentives.

According to the BPK, the examination of the overpayment of incentives is part of Indonesia’s foreign loan management of COVID-19 Emergency Response in the Ministry of Health during the 2020-2021 period.

“The purpose of this examination is to provide an assessment of the program’s compliance in achieving the Disbursement Linked Indicator (DLI)/Disbursement Linked Result (DLR) of Indonesia’s emergency response to COVID-19 during the period from 2020 to 2021,” Firman stated.

Source: Antara News