The disbursement of financial stimuli for active employees earning less than Rp 5 million (US$344.16) per month has been postponed from Aug. 25 to the end of this month.

Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah said the start of the program — which will give eligible recipients Rp 600,000 in monthly assistance over a period of four months — was delayed to provide more time to cross check the data of recipients registered in the Workers Social Security Agency (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan).

The government needs more time as 2.5 millions workers are listed as recipients in the first batch of the stimulus disbursement, she said.

“[We projected that it] would take at least four days to perform a checklist. So, we apologize to the first batch of recipients as we need to be extra careful in cross-checking the data,” Ida said as quoted by kompas.com on Monday.

She assured that the stimuli would be distributed no later than Aug. 31.

The government has allocated Rp 37.7 trillion from the state budget for the program. Some 15.7 million social security program beneficiaries will be included in the scheme.

The stimulus is not available for state-owned enterprise workers and civil servants. It is also different from the preemployment card program, which only focuses on helping job seekers and laid-off workers by funding their job training. (dpk)