Businessmen ready to reveal bribery cases
Businessmen ready to reveal bribery cases
BANDUNG, West Java (JP): Chairman of the Association of Indonesian Businessmen (APINDO) Hadi Suratno says the association is ready to disclose documented cases of bribery, provided that the government guarantees the anonymity of victims.
"We have records of bribery cases from many companies, but we are not going to disclose them because the extorted businessmen might be threatened by certain elements," he told The Jakarta Post after attending the opening of an Indonesia-Japan seminar on industrial relations here yesterday.
Hadi was responding to a statement made by Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief on Tuesday in which he asked businesses to inform him of any illegal government impositions.
Latief denied reports that bribery was common among government officials, whose demands, the report added, often prevented businessmen from raising the salaries of their workers.
"No Ministry of Manpower officials have been found guilty of taking bribes from businessmen. Any official involved in such a case would be punished," the minister said.
Latief said he had received many reports of corruption involving tens of millions of rupiahs and government officials, but all were proven groundless.
Many labor activists believe that the daily minimum wage level, low compared to other ASEAN countries, could be raised substantially higher if the government were to eradicate "invisible costs".
Bomer Pasaribu, the secretary general of the All Indonesian Workers Union (SPSI), said that the authorities should push these costs down as low as possible for the benefit of the workers.
"If the invisible costs, which can amount to as much as 30 percent of total costs, are transferred to labor costs, the condition of workers will certainly improve," he said.
Pasaribu added that the World Bank has repeatedly criticized Indonesia for its high cost economy resulting from irregularities, corruption and leakages in its development budget.
"Therefore, all corruption and bribery should be wiped out, or reduced to a minimum, to allow workers to enjoy the fruits of national development," Pasaribu said.
Meanwhile Kenichi Kuroda, marketing manager of PT Eastemtex, a textile company in Tangerang, said that his company had never bribed any officials or military officers since its establishment in 1974.
"I have worked in the company for 20 years and nobody has extorted money from us," he said. He added that his company also has encountered no problems in dealing with the bureaucracy.
"The authorities should launch an all-out war against corruption if they want to clean up government," he said. (rms)