Administrative costs

Administrative costs

From Prospek

I have always supported the government's appeal for developers to use Indonesian names for housing complexes, instead of foreign language words.

Now that Bahasa is used to replace foreign words new problems arise. I myself sometimes feel uneasy telling my relatives, in my home town, the address of my housing complex.

Since the foreign name of the complex has been changed, my address has to be changed too. And all other documents, such as identity cards, the family card, driver's license, passports etc., have to be changed.

When I asked about the cost of changing an identity card -- from single to married -- I was told by the village official that it would cost me Rp 10,000, and for the family card the cost is Rp 3,500. I have no idea how much it will cost me to change the addresses on my passport and driver's license.

My question is, who will be responsible for paying all those costs? Imagine the amount of money that will be spent for this process. There are at least 400,000 residents, whose identity cards have to be changed. And about 100,000 family cards have to be renewed. That means about Rp 4 billion will be needed to change the identity cards and another Rp 350 million for the family cards. A fantastic amount!

My next question is whether the developer will be willing to share these administrative costs with the residents. Because it would be unfair to leave the burden solely to the consumers.

KOMANG WITARSA

Address withheld