A hair-raising polling booth

SEMARANG: Poll officials in a poor neighborhood here had to go to the local funeral parlor to borrow shrouds, usually used to wrap corpses, to build a pooling booth.

Officials said on Monday the Rp 40,000 they received from the government was not enough to buy materials to build a polling station.

"There is no law which bans the use of funeral shrouds, so while we can use them for free, why not," the neighbor chief of Cabean, West Semarang, said.

The tables, chairs and megaphones used at the polling station were borrowed from residents and a local school. The Rp 40,000 will go into the neighborhood administration's coffers. (har)