<![CDATA[Social assistance programs in Indonesia are designed to protect poor families while guiding them toward economic independence, yet most beneficiaries in Kota Bitung experience only administrative graduation, meaning they leave the recipient list without gaining a sustainable livelihood. This gap threatens the city's contribution to the national target of graduating 300,000 Family Hope Program beneficiary families in 2026, even though Kota Bitung holds a strong local economic base in fisheries processing, port logistics tied to its Special Economic Zone, and marine tourism. This article traces the institutional root cause of low substantive graduation and formulates a policy recommendation to address it. The analysis draws on qualitative policy analysis, combining a regulatory document study, a literature review of conditional cash transfer and graduation approach research, and the author's field observation while coordinating poverty programs at the regional development planning agency. Problem priority is assessed with the Urgency, Seriousness, Growth method, root causes are traced through two levels of cause analysis, and policy alternatives are evaluated with Bardach's criteria cross checked against Dunn's criteria. The analysis finds that the root cause is institutional fragmentation between the social affairs office and productive sector offices, which operate without a binding beneficiary handover protocol. The article recommends a mayoral regulation that establishes an integrated empowerment pathway, designates the regional planning agency as cross office coordinator, builds a handover protocol from the social affairs office to productive sector offices, and calibrates an empowerment menu to the region's leading economic sectors.]]>
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