Live Without Social Protection; Why Does it Hard for Transgender Women to Access Social Security
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26 September 2022 22:17 WIB
Loka Pitaloka, a trans woman from Sikka, NTT (East Nusa Tenggara), also shares the same experience. She said that she does not have access to state healthcare services as she doesn’t have BPJS Kesehatan insurance. That’s also because she doesn’t have an ID card or KTP. As a result, Lola often takes out a loan to get healthcare treatment. “I borrow money, some would give it. If no one gives it, it’s super hard to get treatment,” she said.
The absence of healthcare and social security access makes the trans women situation even more difficult amid the pandemic period. A survey by Crisis Response Mechanism (CRM), a collective activity initiated by a number of gender equality activists during the pandemic, showed that 57.5 percent of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community did not receive Covid-19 assistance from the government.
The reasons are: in addition to the limited information, the discrimination against gender and sexual identity is still happening, as well as the absence of citizenship documents. In Yogyakarta, in July 2021, Waria Crisis Center announced that at least 11 trans women in Yogyakarta died at their boarding house due to limited access to medicine, healthcare service, and food.
For a trans woman, it is not easy to register for a KTP. Ochan in Ende is still traumatized by her childhood memory of being made fun of, making her afraid to face village officials. Jeny, a trans woman in Yogyakarta, who finally got her ID card in August 2021, went through a different experience when she registered her citizen document in Sleman in 2015, which was also faced by most transgenders.
Jeny for years had failed to apply for an ID card as she could not meet the requirement of the recommendation letter to change her domicile from her original residence in Subang, West Java. The problem was that it was nearly two decades since Jeny was ‘exiled’ by her family that denied her transformation as a trans woman. Requiring her to meet the recommendation letter to change her domicile meant that she was forced to go back home. “The officers didn't know that my family didn’t want to accept me anymore,” Jeny explained when met on Tuesday, August 30.
When she did not have an ID card, Jeny could not also register as a BPJS Kesehatan member. “It’s so hard when you’re sick,” she recalled. Jeny immediately applied to register for her BPJS Kesehatan membership when she finally got her KTP in August 2021.
Coordinator of Suara Kita, Hartoyo, said that it is not easy for trans women to access social security. The fact is that for many of the trans women who died, the burial process and funding depended on the joint venture from their community itself. “The limited access to healthcare services until the social assistance for trans women community is caused by their limited access to registering for an ID card,” said Hartoyo.
Suara Kita, an advocacy organization for LGBTQI equality, is now promoting a campaign of KTP for the trans women movement. Jeny in Yogyakarta finally obtained her ID card last year through this movement. But not many trans women are as fortunate as Jeny.
From June 2021 until today, Hartoyo said, only 647 trans women have an ID card or KTP, and only 61 have a BPJS Kesehatan membership. Suara Kita has yet to collect data on BPJS Kesehatan membership among the trans women group.
