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Indonesia: Gojek, Traveloka will not offer courses in preemployment card training: Program management
The management of the government’s preemployment card program revealed Wednesday that it had failed to persuade ride-hailing decacorn Gojek and online airline ticketing and hotel booking unicorn Traveloka to be its partners.
The management’s executive director, Denni Purbasari, said her side had asked Gojek and Traveloka, valued at US$10 billion and $1 billion respectively, to provide online courses to enhance the skills of the program’s eligible unemployment benefit recipients.
“Gojek and Traveloka said: ‘We do not want to participate right now,’” Denni said in an online talk. “After making their assessments, they concluded that [the offer] was not in line with their core businesses.”
The program, which aims to help people whose jobs and businesses had been hit by the COVID-19 outbreak, eventually partnered with eight online learning platforms, including Skill Academy by Ruangguru, MauBelajarApa and Pintaria, to provide such courses.
The preemployment card program, which was launched on April 11 to accommodate 5.6 million eligible recipients this year, recently drew criticism over its lack of transparency in appointing its partners.
Many accused the government of conflict of interest for partnering with online learning platform Skill Academy, which was linked to then-presidential expert staff member Adamas Belva Syah Devara. He later resigned from his post and continued his role as CEO of education tech firm Ruangguru, the parent company of Skill Academy.
Denni said her side had held consultations since last year with tech companies, researchers, labor unions, the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) and representatives from more than 50 companies before the appointments.
The current eight partner platforms were chosen because they had met the requirements, such as operating at a national scale, the necessary information and technology capacity, relevant courses and partnerships with training institutions.
“We invited Bukalapak, Tokopedia, Gojek and others, but they do not offer courses,” said Denni, who formerly served as the President’s economic policy adviser. “That was the reason we invited Ruangguru and MauBelajarApa.”
Gojek, employing more than 1 million drivers, is however, partnering with the program by providing a payment platform through its e-wallet Gopay. The preemployment card program is also partnering with two other digital payment platforms, Ovo and LinkAja, and state-owned lender Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) to disburse cash assistance as part of the Rp 3.5 million (US$231.66) in benefits for each recipient.
Source: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/30/gojek-traveloka-will-not-offer-courses-in-preemployment-card-training-program-management.html