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Equal cash bonuses for medalists of Asian Games, Para Games
"The struggles to win gold medals are equally tough for all athletes. It is an extraordinary competition. The government is strongly committed to treating them equally."
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Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita (The Jakarta Post/Jerry Adiguna)
T
em>The newly appointed Social Affairs Minister, Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita, recently talked with The Jakarta Post’s Niken Prathivi and Gemma Holliani Cahya about his ministry’s involvement in the Asian Para Games 2018 and his other programs. The following are excerpts of their conversation.
Question: President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has promised the Asian Para Games winners cash bonuses equal to those for winners of the Asian Games winners in August, namely Rp 1.5 billion (US$100,000) for individual gold medalists. What is the reason for the decision?
Answer: The President’s decision is based on Law No. 8/2016 on people with disabilities. All citizens have equal rights and obligations, including in sports. Competitiveness in sports is the same for all athletes, including for people with disabilities. We cannot say the Asian Games are more competitive than the Asian Para Games. It is equally tough, including in their training. They need the same process to reach an achievement, so why should we discriminate with regard to the bonuses?
The struggles to win gold medals are equally tough for all athletes. It is an extraordinary competition. The government is strongly committed to treating them equally.
What is the responsibility of your ministry in this event?
One of our responsibilities is to ensure that all available infrastructure is friendly for people with disabilities. We, including the directors general and other high officials, have inspected all the venues. When we found problems, we reported them to the INAPGOC (Indonesia Para Games Organizing Committee) and the Ministry of Public Works and Housing. However so far, we did not find any significant problems.
Our second obligation pertains to the volunteers. The recruited volunteers are all good, but it does not mean that they understand how to serve people with disabilities. Our ministry trained the 8,000 volunteers to enable them to work in the field and know how to serve handicapped people with their own uniqueness. Empathy alone, without enough understanding, can cause problems. The volunteers were trained to provide optimal services for the handicapped people coming from accross Asia.
We have promoted the event in the public. We also provide 10 specially modified cars on our own initiative. We adopted a one-door policy for the Para Games budget through INAPGOC. All related ministries must coordinate with INAPGOC. So in the context of our ministry, we took initiatives to provide 10 cars for the people with disabilities. During the Para Games itself, we will facilitate about 2,500 non athletes to support the events in cooperation with social organizations and our departments.
Not less important is the dissemination of the program to the public, to make our success a legend. Indonesia will be remembered as a country that is truly friendly to people with disabilities.
I also need to emphasize that the Asian Para Games 2018 are not competing with the Asian Games 2018 neither in terms of organization nor achievement. The success of the Asian Games (gave us the) motivation to make a better Para Games, but we compete with the 2014 Incheon Asian (Para) Games in South Korea. We should be better or at least we should be as good as them. That is the real challenge.
What will you do for the dissabled people after the Asian Para Games?
Not all people with disabilities are poor, both people who suffer the problem from their birth or after. The responsibility of the Social Affairs Ministry is to help the poor. We should give special attention to them.
When the Asian Para Games are over, our duty and responsibility remains, because that is our main task and function. Providing facilities and infrastructure, unfortunately, is not our duty. We are assigned to develop human capital of the people with disabilities in order to make them productive.
You were appointed as a minister in August. You will only have one year to implement your programs. What are your priorities?
We will continue all good programs by my predecessors. The Family Hope Program (PKH) is the President’s program. He pays an extraordinary attention to our brothers and sisters still living below the poverty line. In 2017, the number of beneficiaries of the program was actually only 7 million people, but the President increased it to 10 million recepients. Next year, the number will be the same, but we will raise the index of the recipients. Now there are 1.8 million recipient families. Next year, the quality will be significantly better. That is our priority program because the PKH and the social assistance programs are the efforts of the government to accelerate poverty alleviation. The program has raised people’s purchasing power.
We use the cash transfer system, so the government no longer needs to provide logistics to distribute basic needs, because all recipients have bank accounts. That is what we call an effort to raise people’s purchasing power. We transfer money, because, based on findings of the statistics office and the Non-Cash Assistance Program (BPNT), most of the recipients use the money to buy rice and eggs. Of course, we will not only maintain the very important program, but increase its quality.
Although we have very limited time, we still want to push the government programs in social empowerment. We want to create more enterpreneurs at the grassroots level. When the people at the grassroots already have the spirit of enterpreneurship, we will provide coaching and assistance, including on funding, to enable them to develop businesses of their own. That will be our short-term program.
