Presiden Urged to Supervise Social Security Bill Deliberations

Jakarta (ANTARA) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono should directly supervise the parliamentary process to deliberate the Bill on Social Security Management Agency (RUU PBJS), a labor activist said. "The RUU BPJS needs to be finished soon because it concerns the people's constitutional rights. The president should directly lead and supervise the House deliberations on the bill in the coming 47 days," Timboel Siregar, a Presidium member of the Social Security Action Committee (KAJS), said here on Monday. He expressed hope that with a direct supervision by the president, the bill could be finalized soon based on the nine principles of the Law on the National Security System. Timboel said that in the current fasting month when the House of Representatives (DPR) is on recess, the president should also give directives to his ministers so that the deliberations on the bill would be finalized next October. He expressed doubts however that the RUU BPJS would have already been endorsed by next October, saying it might once again fail to be finalized. "If the president ignores it, the bill will fail to be endorsed once again," he said. The government and the House of Representatives (DPR) agreed last month to extend the time-line of the bill's deliberations until the next parliamentary sitting as it still faced opposition, particularly to a clause regarding the formation of security management agency firm. It was earlier expected that the bill would have been endorsed during the House's sitting last month, yet there were still polemics on its certain clause which regulates that the existing four social security firms should be merged into a BPJS. Clause or point 2g concerns the transformation of four state-owned social security firms, namely PT Taspen, PT Asabri, PT Askes and PT Jamsostek into two BPJSs. But it has sparked polemics and was rejected by a number of interest groups in society.