;BISNIS INDONESIA;ARP;

;BISNIS INDONESIA;ARP;
ANPAk..r..
Letter-customer day
National customers' day
JP/7/let32

National Customers Day

From Bisnis Indonesia

The report on the National Customers Day carried in Bisnis
Indonesia, Sept. 2, 2003, amazed me. President Megawati
Soekarnoputri officially inaugurated the day on Sept. 4 by
signing a first day cover for new National Customers Day 2003
stamps, a picture of which was published on the front page of the
same paper on Sept. 5.

Color photos of the State Minister for State Enterprises, 15
state enterprise president directors, and the chairman of
Frontier (a marketing & research consultancy firm), attending the
ceremony marking the inauguration of this national day were also
carried on page 5 of the paper, accompanied by various slogans
espousing better customer care and satisfaction.

As a customer, I would like to appeal to state enterprises to
provide customer service in a fair manner by creating a
professional system of charge determination so that customers
will not be threatened by having service cut off or having fines
imposed.

In the case of the state electricity company, PLN, the
collection of charges should be done by sending bills or
statements to customers (as is done by the state
telecommunications company, Telkom). In this way, customers will
receive a formal notification of the amounts they have to pay.

Such bills or statements should also serve as receipts for the
payments made in previous months so that customers need not save
all the bills from the preceding periods. To date, costumers have
to pay the charges for earlier months or years if they cannot
produce evidence of payment -- for example, in a case where the
receipt has been lost. If they do not make such payments, their
electricity supply will be cut off or fines imposed within two
weeks.

I wonder how it is that the loss of a bill that has already
been paid can also result in the "disappearance" of PLN's record
of the payment. PLN should thus establish a special section to
accommodate customer complaints with its findings being made
public through the media.

S. SUHARIMAN
Jakarta

;MEDIA INDONESIA;LEI;
ANPAk..r..
Letter-Eradicating terrorism
JP/7/let43

On eradicating terrorism

From Media Indonesia

Rampant terrorist acts across the world have led to
controversies in our country about the need for our intelligence
service to enjoy greater authority, so that terrorism can be
better countered and handled.

Bomb attacks perpetrated by terrorists in Indonesia have led
to both the world's sympathy for Indonesia and allegations that
the country is a lair of terrorists.

To deal with the impact of terrorist attacks at home, the
Indonesian government issued a government regulation in lieu of
law on antiterrorism in 2002, which the House later ratified as
the law on antiterrorism.

The law can be enforced effectively only if our intelligence
service enjoys greater authority in dealing with terrorism. Our
national police cannot make the best use of this law unless it is
supported by intelligence services, for example the intelligence
service of the Indonesian military and the state intelligence
agency.

The fact is that now, our intelligence services enjoy only a
limited authority to arrest those suspected of being involved in
terrorist acts, while the national police have no authority to
carry out such arrests. The police can arrest only those who are
suspected of having committed terrorist acts.

It is this legal constraint that has prevented our security
apparatuses from properly preventing and countering acts of
terror in this country.

The deputy prime minister of Malaysia once attributed that
country's success in establishing security and prosperity for
Malaysians to the enforcement of its Internal Security Act (ISA).
Indonesia must look up to Malaysia as a model in this respect.

ADAM SYAHRONI
Jakarta