Overcoming Covid-19, Mimika Regency Government Allocates Funds of IDR 197 Billion

Overcoming Covid-19, Mimika Regency Government Allocates Funds of IDR 197 Billion

The Government of Mimika Regency, Papua Province has conducted a refocusing or reallocation of the 2020 regional budget to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, which for the first phase has absorbed a budget of Rp197 billion.

Mimika Regent Eltinus Omaleng in Timika said the budget was used to finance three main activities, namely increasing community health capacity, empowering the economic community affected by COVID-19 and organizing the Social Safety Net (JPS) program.

"Activities undertaken by refocusing are official travel, meetings, education and training, technical guidance, socialization, workshops, workshops, seminars and other activities that can be postponed so that the funds can be diverted for handling the COVID-19 outbreak in Mimika Regency," explained the Omaleng Regent.

For the health sector, the total budget spent reached Rp166,251,761,500 to support the COVID-19 treatment activities in Mimika conducted by Mimika District Hospital as a referral hospital and the Mimika Health Office.

As for the activities of community economic empowerment, funds have been disbursed as much as Rp 11,500,000,000 for the purchase of agricultural products, community farms in the suburbs of Timika through the Office of Cooperatives and SMEs, the Office of Industry and Trade, the Office of Animal Husbandry and others.

While the JPS fund was originally budgeted at Rp20 billion for the purchase of food (groceries) to help the community in 16 districts (sub-districts) outside Mimika Baru and Kuala Kencana Districts.

As for the procurement and distribution of foodstuffs for the Mimika Baru and Wania Districts, which will begin next week, a budget of Rp 16,690,750,000 is targeted with a target of 133,000 families or with a total of around 166,000 inhabitants.

Omaleng Regent said Mimika Regency Government also received assistance or donations from several parties to support the handling of COVID-19 namely from the Amungme and Kamoro Community Empowerment Foundation (YPMAK) in the form of Rp2 billion in funds plus Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for health workers, financial assistance from the Papua Provincial Government in the amount of IDR 5 billion and assistance from the Puncak Jaya Regency Government in the amount of IDR 1 billion.

Mimika Regional Secretary Acting Secretary Marthen Paiding said that initially the Pemkab together with the Mimika DPRD only budgeted Rp19 billion in funds through the 2020 APBD for unexpected funds considering that the epidemic of the COVID-19 pandemic had never been imagined to hit Mimika.

"This COVID-19 outbreak suddenly appeared so that during the discussion of the Mimika 2020 APBD there was not enough funds budgeted for the unexpected allocation of funds. We only budgeted Rp19 billion," he explained.

On March 31 Mimika Regent Eltinus Omaleng confirmed that he would prepare a budget of Rp100 billion for handling COVID-19 after reviewing Mimika District Hospital facilities.

Underlying Presidential Instruction No. 1 of 2020 and Permendagri No. 20 of 2020 and Minister of Home Affairs Instruction No. 1 of 2020, Mimika Regency Government then reallocated the 2020 APBD to enlarge the budget capacity for handling COVID-19 through unexpected fund posts.