If these people manage to scrape together more that Rp. 469,560 per month, technically they’re not considered poor by the government
According to the Jakarta Central Statistics Agency (BPS) and data they collected in 2014, there are about 412,790 poor people in Jakarta, out of an official population of about 10 million. Meaning about 4.1% of Jakarta’s population is poor, which doesn’t sound so bad (it is, in fact, the lowest poverty rate of any city in Indonesia).
Yeah, it doesn’t sound so bad… until you find out what the BPS’ definition of poverty is. According to the statistics agency, the definition of a poor person is somebody who earns less that Rp. 469,560 per month. That’s just slightly over Rp 15,000 per day.
Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama criticized those statistics, saying they were based upon a completely ridiculous standard – specifically the amount of calories that the government thinks can be purchased with a certain amount of money. According to the government’s calculation, if you have enough money to purchase enough calories to survive for a month, you’re not poor.
“If using the BPS data, the number of poor people in Jakarta is small. Why? Because they only use the calorie standard. Yes, imagine just Rp 469 thousand, if you have that much income you’ve not considered poor. In my opinion, people under Rp 2 million should be considered poor, ” Ahok told Poskotanews.
Ahok admitted that if that figure were to become the new standard of poverty in Jakarta. the official statistics would suddenly show that 60% of the people living in the capital were poor, which might make his administration look bad. But he said that wasn’t important – what was important was improving standards.
So Ahok said he would ask the the Regional Planning Board of Jakarta and BPS to start applying new economic standards when making surveys.
“We do not care if people say poverty grew under the leadership of Jokowi-Ahok, that does not matter. If it increases, it’s because we’ve raised the standards.”
