The government should also ensure the validity of data on the number of consumers eligible to receive electricity subsidy, Chairman of the Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) for East Nusa Tenggara Marthen Mullik stated here on Wednesday.
Besides popularizing the plan, the government and state-owned electricity company PLN should also conduct a re-verification to ensure the validity of the data, he noted.
Mullik made the remarks in connection with the governments plan to drop the subsidy for subscribers, who have sufficient income, to purchase electricity at the normal rate in June 2016.
PLNs provisional data indicated that some 18 million household subscribers of subsidized electricity were no longer entitled to the aid. They are part of 22 million customers who have so far received the subsidy.
As part of its verification process, PLN had visited 4.1 million target households and found that 3.4 million of them were no longer entitled to receive the subsidy facility. In future, PLN will not conduct any further verification but instead directly drop the subsidy for the outlined households.
Consumers having any objections to the abolishment of the subsidy can file a complaint with the nearest government apparatuses, such as the rural or village head offices.
The complaints will be sent via Internet or storage devices to the sub-district offices to be added to the PLN database.
"Efforts to draw support for the plan must be made to inform the people, and this should be followed up by another verification to ensure the validity of data on household subscribers who are either eligible or ineligible to receive the power subsidy," he pointed out.
The verification must be conducted independently to facilitate the creation of an accurate database, which will help to prevent any problems in future.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2016
