JAKARTA: Salary payments for civil servants will continue to be made via bank transfer under the current mechanism, Finance Minister Suahasil Nazara has said, following a proposal to channel salaries via President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship Red and White Cooperatives programme.
“(Civil servant salary payments) will remain as they are now. We will continue to process them via transfer, just as we do currently,” Suahasil said at the Presidential Palace Complex in Central Jakarta on Tuesday, as quoted by CNN Indonesia.
Cooperatives Minister Ferry Juliantono said on Oct 14 that a proposal to disburse civil servant salaries through cooperatives had been submitted to the Finance Ministry to refine the programme’s implementation.
Though Ferry noted the proposed plan was to begin this year, he has not provided details on a potential timeline, the payment mechanism or which cooperatives would be involved.
The plan aims to enhance cooperatives’ scope of services as well as competitiveness and is linked to the cooperatives bill now under deliberation at the House of Representatives. According to the draft bill, the government plans to establish a cooperatives supervisory body separate from the Financial Services Authority. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
