ABOUT 10.8 million people have received RM11.5 billion from the Bantuan Prihatin Nasional (BPN) aid fund, including the third group comprising those who made an appeal from May 11 to 31, said Finance Minister Tengku  Zafrul Abdul Aziz. 

“This represents an additional allocation of RM1.5 billion (on top of the initial allocation of RM10 billion),” he said when presenting the 7th Inter-Agency Economic Stimulus Implementation and Coordination Unit report on the implementation of the Prihatin Rakyat Economic Stimulus Package today.

Tengku Zafrul said until May 31, the first group of 8.3 million recipients have received payments in stages. A total of 7.93 million recipients in Phase 1 and 7.9 million in Phase 2 received a combined RM9.11 billion, for a completion status of 96.5%.

Those who have yet to collect the cash payments from Bank Simpanan Nasional branches have until December 31 to do so.

The second group of 2.3 million BPN recipients, was announced on May 9. He said 2.08 million of them had received RM1.57 billion in lump sum payments.

On the third group consisting of those who appealed between May 11 and 31, he said the 170,000 appeals that were received would be reviewed manually.

“The outcome will be announced in mid-June and payments will be disbursed at end-June,” he said.

On the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) i-Lestari programme, Tengku Zafrul said four million applications had been approved as at May 31 involving RM1.9 billion in withdrawals per month.

On the option for employees to reduce their EPF contribution from 11% to 7%, he said the total reduction for May amounted to RM895 million.

“As of May 31, the government had seen more employees opting to maintain their contributions at 11%, accounting for 1.7 million or 23% of EPF contributors compared to 1.5 million previously (as of May 17),” he said.

On the one-off special payment of RM600 per tour guide, Tengku Zafrul said 6,470 tour guides had received the aid totalling RM3.9 million as of May 31.

As for e-hailing drivers, the government has disbursed RM34 million of financial aid to 68,336 recipients via e-wallet, he said. Payments to a further 8,300 e-hailing drivers are being processed.

On the issue of an estimated 30,000 taxi drivers who did not receive the special aid due to their expired taxi driver’s card, the finance minister noted that the Transport Ministry had announced on May 23 that the cash aid would be extended to them provided their taxi driver’s card was renewed.

“To facilitate this process, they are granted an extension (for renewal) until July 1,” Tengku Zafrul added. – Bernama, June 2, 2020.