Bureaucratic corruption
In the drive to eradicate corruption, proponents of reform seem to be focusing exclusively on our governing and business elite. However, it should not be forgotten that bureaucratic corruption involving even the lowest ranking civil servants is equally entrenched. Civil service corruption, disdain for the public and bullying from officialdom has been perfected to an art form in our country.
A small package containing 600 tablets of vitamins C, E and Iron, and some cheap weight gain milk formula was recently sent to me from abroad. Mail from abroad typically arrives opened or otherwise tampered with, but my family and I were not prepared for this latest surprise. Although all postage, tax, duties, miscellaneous fees and regulations had been observed by the sender -- and assurances given by the Indonesian postal service and customs that the vitamins would arrive promptly -- the vitamins were seized an impounded by the Director General of Food and Medicine.
They said the vitamins could not be delivered by the post office without two official documents, one from the director general of the post office and one from another bureaucracy. The price for this first document? Rp 125,000 per vitamin! A simple calculation shows that it would cost Rp 75,000,000 simply to obtain a piece of paper that may or may not enable me to retrieve the vitamins.
When I pointed out that this price could not possibly be met, the total value of the vitamins was about US$40, the officials then said that the actual price was $175 per vitamin, or $105,000 for the whole box! This exceeds the price for which they were purchased by more than 2,000 times, but the officials insisted they were treating me fairly.
When I explained that the vitamins were for my elderly grandmother, who is clinically anemic, the officials laughed contemptuously and said they were only following "regulations."
When I asked to see the regulation(s) in writing, their tone became abusive. They said the vitamins could be classified as drugs and that I could therefore be jailed for attempting to import them into Indonesia. Even as I invited them and any other agencies of their choosing -- including the police, customs and immigration -- to open the package and inspect the vitamins, the officials said such a course of action would take many months to complete and could only be undertaken after the money had been paid in full.
They steadfastly refused to show me the said "regulation" and said that under no circumstances could the vitamins be returned to the sender, even if I agreed to pay the postage. When I told the officials that I would reveal their behavior to the newspapers and hire a lawyer to help retrieve my personal property, they simply laughed again and invited me to do so.
Is there no consumer rights group which has the teeth to help ordinary citizens with such matters? As the government shuffles faces and makes grandiloquent noises about reform, Indonesians have realized that government transparency has at last been achieved: The government and much of the bureaucracy is transparently and intractably corrupt.
ELLA F. DUMBELLA
Jakarta