Red-White Co-ops offer income opportunities for social aid recipients

Minister of Cooperatives Ferry Juliantono said beneficiaries of the Family Hope Program (PKH) have the opportunity to earn additional income by joining the Red and White Village Cooperatives.

He explained that as cooperative members, beneficiaries are entitled to receive a share of profits at the end of each year.

“The profit-sharing scheme will provide significant additional income for beneficiary families. With this, we hope they can move out of decile 1 (extremely poor) and decile 2 (poor),” he said on Monday.

In addition, he noted that social assistance recipients also have the opportunity to work as employees in the cooperatives.

Each village cooperative is expected to employ around 15 to 18 people from beneficiary families. Nationwide, this could absorb nearly 1.4 million PKH recipients into the workforce, providing them with a stable source of income.

To support the policy, the Ministry of Cooperatives plans to issue special regulations to ease membership requirements for beneficiaries.

Juliantono stressed that the regulation is important to ensure beneficiaries are not burdened by membership fees, but instead can become self-reliant through active participation in cooperatives.

“We want them to be independent, not solely dependent on social assistance,” he said.

The ministry will also coordinate with the Ministry of Social Affairs, including integrating PKH beneficiary data to ensure targeted recruitment.

Deputy Minister of Cooperatives Farida Farichah added that recruitment plans are being finalized, emphasizing the importance of integrating data on beneficiaries in the lowest income groups into the National Socioeconomic Single Data (DTSEN).

Meanwhile, Minister of Social Affairs Saifullah Yusuf said around 8 million beneficiary families are being encouraged to join the cooperatives. However, not all will be recruited as employees, as job opportunities will be prioritized for those of working age.