Administration denies bribing Bekasi councilors

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration denied on Wednesday it bribed Bekasi councilors Rp 1 million (US$147) each to retract their demand for the closure of the 108-hectare Bantar Gebang dump site in Bekasi.

City Secretary Fauzi Bowo said the administration had not given any money to the 17 Bekasi councilors, who are members of a feasibility study team on garbage management.

"We have not spent the city administration's money on such a thing," Fauzi said.

He revealed, however, that the money might have come from the city's sanitary agency.

" The sanitary agency has its own budget for operational expenditures. We'll seek verification on the alleged bribery with the sanitary agency," he said.

Last month the 17 councilors visited a garbage dump site in Surabaya, East Java, for a comparative study on garbage management.

It is alleged that during the visit a Bekasi mayoralty official left envelopes containing money in the councilors' hotel rooms.

Some of the councilors returned the money when they knew that the money was from the city administration. Bekasi mayor Nonon Sonthanie reportedly asked Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso to finance the councilors' trip to Surabaya.

Bekasi councilors earlier asked the city administration to close the dump, saying that it had polluted the air and water leading to health problems such as respiratory diseases and skin infections. In the meeting between the 17 councilors and the Jakarta administration on Sept. 30, the administration agreed to close the dump from next month.

But the Jakarta administration appears likely to cancel the plan after learning that the development of a substitute garbage dump site in Ciangir, Tangerang, was not feasible.

"It will only move the same problem from Bekasi to Tangerang," Governor Sutiyoso said last month.

The Jakarta administration then decided to allocate Rp 10 billion for renovations at the Bantar Gebang dump site, which has been designed to accommodate Jakarta's 23,000 cubic meters of garbage per day until 2004.

Meanwhile, Jakarta councilor Tjuk Sudono of the National Mandate Party (PAN) regretted "the bribery" if it really had happened.

"In such an era of transparency, unclear allocation of the city's budget should not be tolerated anymore," Tjuk, who is a member of the city council's commission D for development affairs, said on Wednesday.

He said the council suspected that the city administration had "marked up" the budget for the Rp 10 billion spending allocated for the repair of the garbage dump.

"It should not that large. We'll ask the city administration for a clarification," he said.

In a related development, the city administration is considering dumping garbage in areas designated as sites for a reclamation project in North Jakarta, the city's Development Planning Board head Bambang Sungkono said on Wednesday.

"Several developed countries, such as Japan, have used their garbage for reclamation," Bambang said.

He said several city officials would soon leave for Japan for a feasibility study. (jun)