Banjarmasin govt guarantees 1,000 families with rice assistance

Banjarmasin, S Kalimantan (ANTARA) - Banjarmasin City Government, through the local Social Agency, guarantees 1,000 poor families to receive rice assistance.

"Each family gets 11 kilograms of rice every month from the city government," said Head of Social Agency Iwan Ristianto here on Sunday.

According to him, the assistance is named Berasko (the city rice) assistance, and it is not assistance from the central government.

Whereas the assistance from the central government is Hope Family Program (PKH) and Non-cash Food Assistance (BPNT).

Iwan explained that poor families recorded in the Integrated List of Social Welfare (DTKS) in Banjarmasin is around 46 thousand.

"Half of them or about 29 thousand get social assistance from the central government programs, and (part of) the rest is covered by the city government's Berasko program," Iwan said.

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Indeed, he acknowledged, the city government assistance through the Berasko program is far from the number of poor families that needed attention, but the capacity of the city budget was only that.

"The recipients are the results of selection at the urban village (kelurahan) level, they are selected on a priority scale," he said.

For other poor families who have not received assistance, the city government proposes them to the central government.

"We continue to make effort to record the latest data of poor families, especially when the pandemic ongoing, should be many new poor families," he said.

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