Autonomy leads to improved public services: Survey

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

About four years after the implementation of the Regional Autonomy Law, the majority of people have seen improvements in health, education and administrative services, all of which have been decentralized, a survey by the World Bank and Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta revealed.

The Governance and Decentralization Survey -- which surveyed 1,815 households in 32 cities and regencies in eight provinces -- said, however, the quality of police services, which remains centralized, had either declined or remained unchanged.

"The verdict is most Indonesians feel that decentralization is beneficial," World Bank Indonesia Country Director Andrew Steer said in a press briefing on Thursday. "The majority of Indonesians can see real improvements in their local public services following decentralization."

The Regional Autonomy Law gives bigger authority to regional administrations and legislators. The law was first passed in 1999 but started to be implemented two years later with a revision that took place last year.

The survey -- claimed to be the most comprehensive study of the impact of decentralization on the quality of public services to date -- found that 65 percent of respondents identified improvements in public health in areas such as the quality of facilities and services, availability of medicine and shorter waiting times.

In public education, 60 percent of households polled felt there was an improvement in public education, citing improvements in the condition of schools, quality of teachers, academic performance and availability of extracurricular activities.

In administrative services, 59 percent of those polled felt that improvements had been made in areas such as the simplification of requirements and procedures, shorter processing times and courtesy of public officials.

Conversely, 66 percent of households felt that police services stayed the same or deteriorated, citing haphazard enforcement of laws, discrimination in providing services and cost as a reason for their concerns.

On a positive note for the police, respondents felt that there was improvement in the response time and attitude of the police.

"It's interesting that police services, which are still centralized, received poor performance measures," said Steer.

However, the survey also shows that bribes for most services are still common in acquiring land deeds (53 percent), driver's licenses (49 percent) and ID cards (36 percent).

"The degree of corruption is huge as there are bad things associated with giving authority to people who previously did not have the power and now are abusing it," Steer said. (002)