City Council asked to cancel building plan

Annastashya Emmanuelle, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

JAKARTA (JP): Some 50 demonstrators grouped under the Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) staged a protest at City Council on Friday, demanding the council cancel its plan to build a new council building.

"Building a new office is not as urgent as the provision of decent housing facilities or the increase in salary of the city's teachers. It would be better if the Rp 30.5 billion (roughly US$3 million) was allocated for those purposes," chairman of the forum Azas Tigor Nainggolan told The Jakarta Post.

Tigor suggested city councillors should improve their performance before asking for more facilities, which would cost the city budget heavily.

The new building, to be equipped with a sauna and fitness center, was revealed by the council's deputy chairman, Tarmidi Suhardjo, on Tuesday, and immediately triggered controversy among various local nongovernmental organization.

Tigor said a new building was not in urgent need for the councillors as the current building was still feasible for the council's 85 members.

The protesters sang and staged a pantomime depicting councillors who turned down people who come to the council to convey their concerns.

The demonstrators also handed over bottles of shampoo, pails and brushes to the council's secretariat as a token to show that the councillors should clean up their "dirty thoughts".

The shampoo, they said, was for councillors to use to wash their heads and clear their minds from their ludicrous way to spend public money, while the buckets and brushes were intended for the councillors to use to clean the toilets at the city councillors office as an alternative to sport.

However, they were disappointed as no councillors were willing to accept them.

The city administration has often been under fire for making nonessential demands. The latest incident occurred when they cut the city budget's allocation to purchase garbage trucks in order to purchase official vehicles.

The city council was also severely criticized by the public for their controversial foreign trips to the U.S., Japan and China in September. They claimed the trips for comparative study, but in fact they were for pleasure.

After that, they asked the city administration to cover for their life insurance, which they said they deserve to have it due to their jobs as councillors.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) said in their statement that councillors lacked a sense of crisis in their move to build a new office.

ICW coordinator, Patriala M.K, said that it was about time that the councillors fixed a rational spending budget.