President Joko Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla pay the income Zakat through BAZNAS which opened the service at Istana Negara, Jakarta, on Wednesday (14/06). Zakat from President and Vice President are directly accepted by BAZNAS Chairman Bambang Sudibyo amounted to Rp. 45 million.
Some of the Ministers also paid zakat, among them Minister of the State Secretary Pratikno, Minister of Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung, Minister of Agriculture Amran Sulaiman, Public Works Minister and Public Housing Basuki Hadimuljono, Attorney General HM Prasetyo, and Police Chief General Tito Karnavian.
In addition, also about 300 Muzakki (payers) from the BUMN Leaders (Indonesian state owned enterprises), Echelon 1 of Ministry and Echelon 1 of BUMN also pay zakat to BAZNAS, by cash or transfer.
Bambang Sudibyo in his speech, expressed high appreciation to the President, Vice President and Functionaries who pay their zakat through BAZNAS.
According to him, this step will be an example for the whole society that zakat is a duty for Muslim to be fulfilled through the national official zakat institution, namely BAZNAS.
"With the issuance of Act No.23 of 2011 on the Management of Zakat, both of collection and distribution has become the state affairs," he said.
Bambang also revealed that the Presidential step is implemented by 10 Governors, namely Governor of West Java, Banten, Lampung, Jambi, West Sumatera, North Sumatra, Aceh, Southeast Sulawesi, West Nusa Tenggara, East Kalimantan respectively also channel their zakat through Provincial BAZNAS.
"BAZNAS in the management period of 2015-2020 has been determined to inflame the zakat movement in all aspects, we call this by zakat increase passion throughout Indonesia as the Resurrection of Zakat, and this era we call as the era of Zakat Awakening," he said.
In the distribution and utilization of zakat, BAZNAS develops various empowerment programs such as Rumah Sehat BAZNAS, which is free health service for underprivileged people which currently has been established in five cities.
In addition BAZNAS also build "Zakat Community Development" (ZCD), a Community development program by exploiting the potential of each region.
Every year on a national scale, public confidence to BAZNAS continues to increase.
This is evidenced by the increasing number of collection, which in 2016 BAZNAS managed to collect zakat, infak/shadaqah and other religious social funds of 37.45 percent or equivalent to Rp. 5, 017 trillion collected from BAZNAS, BAZNAS Province, BAZNAS District/City and Institute of Amil Zakat.
This amount increased from the collection of 2015 amounting to Rp. 3, 650 trillion, Bambang said.
In the Year 2016 people who have pay zakat (Muzakki) through BAZNAS RI, BAZNAS Province, BAZNAS District/City and LAZ as many as 4,181,078 inhabitants.
Bambang said BAZNAS also strives to innovate the payment service of zakat society. BAZNAS continues to improve the ease of tithe either through banking channels, counter, and pick up zakat.
Currently BAZNAS proactively provides digital ease-of-talent services with various "platforms" and "e-commerce portals" to provide ease of tithe, not only for Indonesians in the country but abroad.
Not enough with that, BAZNAS also launched the idea of ZAKAT INCLUSION which is a movement to invite as many people as possible to participate in zakat campaign and become agent of zakat for society at all levels.
Today BAZNAS in cooperation with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) will start a zakah program collecting through 328,466 Branchless Banking agents in the Framework of Inclusive Finance (Smart Manner).
Smart Manner programs performed by 19 commercial banks and 2 Islamic banks spread in 508 districts/cities in 34 provinces.
OJK Chairman Muliaman D Hadad said zakat also has links to financial inclusion as both of zakat and financial inclusion are equally important in reducing poverty.
(Source: www.antaranews.com/ www.baznas.go.id | transl : ayu/puskasbaznas.com)