Budget rises, services deteriorate
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Despite sharp budget increases, public services in the capital have continued to crumble over the past few years, an urban planning expert says.
The chairman of the Center for Metropolitan Studies at Tarumanegara University in West Jakarta, Soerjono Herlambang, said Governor Sutiyoso had clearly failed to improve public services in the capital.
"There is a very strong impression that Sutiyoso's administration has made no significant improvements, especially in terms of day-to-day public services," Soerjono told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.
He said that while the city enjoyed steady economic growth and bigger budgets, residents continued to experience the same problems, including fires, poverty, evictions, flooding and unemployment.
Jakarta's budget hovered at Rp 3.38 trillion in 2000 before skyrocketing to Rp 14 trillion in 2005.
Residents, however, have seen little evidence of this in the services they receive. There were 772 fires in 2001, 1,083 in 2002, 888 in 2003 and 803 in 2004.
The number of poor households has risen from 101,674 in 2001 to 111,957 in 2004.
"Unemployment stood at 14.7 percent of the total population in 2004, from 12.08 percent in 2000.
"Such a wide gap between positive indicators in the city and the level of services could only happen because the city administration is still infested with mismanagement, inefficiency and corruption. And I think we can easily pinpoint those three problems in Sutiyoso's administration," Soerjono said.
He highlighted the ubiquitous presence of gangs that controlled areas across the capital, threatening residents with seeming impunity.
"Before the 1980s, those gangs only had a strong grip on city centers like Senen, Tanah Abang, Glodok and Blok M. Now they have spread to every corner of the city," he said.
The latest incident was a series of deadly clashes between police officers and some 100 gang members who attacked the marketing office of the Taman Permata Buana housing complex in Kembangan, West Jakarta, last month.
A survey by non-governmental organization Indonesian Institute for Civil Society (INCIS) earlier this year found that 22.2 percent of 480 respondents doubted Sutiyoso's ability to eradicate red tape in the bureaucracy.
"Most of the respondents complained about rampant corruption, especially at the subdistrict level, where officials often ask for 'cigarette money' and 'transportation fees' for services they give to people," said INCIS executive director Hasan Sadeli.
Sutiyoso, in a speech to civil servants on June 22, called on his subordinates to "work much harder and to be more professional".
"In response to demands by residents that the administration eradicate corruption, collusion and nepotism, we will intensify our monitoring and impose sterner sanctions against any civil servants implicated in KKN," he said, using the local acronym for corruption, collusion and nepotism.