City chiefs rapped for pussyfooting on official graft

JAKARTA (JP): The Jakarta City Council criticized the administration on Thursday for its reluctance to thoroughly publicize malfeasance committed by officials.

Speaking in a yearend press conference, the council's head Edy Waluyo said the most visible unwillingness of the city administration to show up their dishonest employees is in the works of the specially-designed reform team.

Set up by Governor Sutiyoso six months ago to satisfy demands of Jakartans for a professional service by city employees, the team so far has never disclosed its findings into popular complaints, Edy said.

Such reluctance itself was not in line with the spirit of reform, which required, among other things, transparency, he added.

"We highly praised the administration's immediate step in establishing the reform team because it has a very strategic position in driving the city toward a better administration.

We first hoped that every step taken by the team would be widely publicized. People also had put great hopes in the team," the councilor from the Armed Forces (ABRI) faction said.

Due to the poor performance of the team, the council recommended that its chairman, Abdul Kahfi, who is also deputy governor for administrative affairs, be replaced soon by someone who is not so busy with his formal job, Edy said.

"It actually needs a group of people who can fully concentrate on controlling the attitude of the administration's employees," he continued.

Sutiyoso launched the reform team in June under a gubernatorial decree, aiming at satisfying the public's demand for a purge of the bureaucracy, greater transparency and improved public services.

The team focused on four major issues -- public services, the budget, expenditure, and law and organization.

Criticism of the team had been uttered very often by various groups of people due to its poor achievement.

Kahfi repeatedly argued that he could not satisfy the people's wishes to have transparent reports about their findings into the alleged malfeasance as it would hurt other people's feelings.

"It's unethical if I disclose the team's detailed findings," the deputy governor said.

"What we can do so far is just announce the number of cases and the categories of malfeasance, no more than that," he repeatedly said.

According to Edy, he was pretty aware that people put great hope in the council to play a better role in fulfilling the people's aspirations.

"But you should understand that our role is limited.

What we can do is just continually voice the people's needs and push the city administration to realize them," he said.

"It's too difficult for us if we are asked to do more than that," the councilor added.

However, he said, the administration always responded to the council's proposals even though they were not always able to materialize them.

According to Edy, the council this year received 47 complaints, much higher than the 17 last year.

Land issues ranked first in the complaints, followed by labor dismissals.

"All of the complaints have been forwarded to the administration," he said.

The council's deputy head, Sugeng Suprijatna, said that out of the 47 cases, 15 had been solved while the remaining 32 were still being processed.

Edy also reported that the council this year had produced 13 bylaws, eight council decisions and 17 council head's decisions. (ind/ylt)