City council continues budget meeting in Ancol

City council continues budget meeting in Ancol

Ahmad Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Having aborted its plan to hold a budget meeting in the Puncak
hill resort in West Java, the city council now plans to hold its
next round of meetings on the 2003 draft city budget in the Hotel
Horison in Ancol, North Jakarta, on Saturday and possibly Sunday.

City Council deputy chairman Chudlary Syafei Hadzami confirmed
on Thursday that the budget meetings would be held in the hotel,
which is partly owned by the city administration.

"But we are not staying in the hotel. We will have left it by
10 p.m. If the meetings have yet to be completed, they will be
continued on Sunday," Chudlary of the United Development Party
claimed.

He said the meetings would be attended by the 32 councillors
who are members of the team assigned to formulate the budget
after it was discussed by the council's five commissions at City
Hall on Wednesday and Thursday.

However, a reliable source said the council secretariat had
booked 40 rooms in the hotel for two nights at an average cost of
Rp 400,000 per room per night.

Last year, the councillors also formulated the city budget in
the hotel after it had been discussed earlier at the city-owned
Wisma Jaya Raya hotel and resort in Cipayung, Puncak, West Java.

The meetings will result in deals between councillors and city
officials. Some projects will be approved while other projects
will be rejected or have their funding cut.

Chudlary claimed holding the meetings in the Horison Hotel was
aimed at avoiding disruption of the discussion as frequently
happened in City Hall and the City Council building.

"We need to concentrate on formulating the budget. Here, we
have to receive many guests. Demonstrators also frequently come
here," Chudlary said.

Chudlary's fears were given substance on Thursday when
hundreds of people from several organizations, including the
Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta), the Association for Humanity and
Justice (Humanika), and Jakarta Development Watch (Jadewa) staged
a rally in front of the council building.

The protesters, among other things, condemned the council's
earlier meeting at the Ciloto Indah Permai Hotel in Ciloto,
Puncak, West Java, for wasting public money.

In fact, this meeting was originally scheduled to be held in
Wisma Jaya Raya but the resort was already booked by the
paramilitary youth group Pemuda Panca Marga. It was then moved to
the Ciloto Hotel instead.

Due to public complaints arising from widespread traffic jams
in the area, the police ordered the meeting to be dissolved. It
was then moved to City Hall. The cancellation of the meeting in
the Ciloto Hotel reportedly resulted in losses worth Rp 75
million for Jakarta taxpayers as the councillors had already used
the hotel for half a day.

Thursday's meeting at City Hall was closed to reporters.

The council's Commission E for social welfare affairs
discussed on Thursday the allocation of about Rp 1.5 trillion for
education sector, including teachers' salaries, or less than 15
percent of the overall budget.

"We demanded that the education budget should be increased to
at least 20 percent," councillor Syamsidar Siregar told reporters
after the meeting.

Meanwhile, the council's Commission D for development affairs
discussed this year's planned projects with officials from the
City Parks Agency and the City Public Works Agency.

The council's Commission A for administrative and legal
affairs discussed the City Public Order Agency's budget of Rp 136
billion, including its plan to purchase gas pistols worth Rp 20
billion.

They earlier objected to the agency buying more pistols as
these could be misused by agency officers. Last year, the agency
purchased dozens of gas pistols.

The council's Commission C for budgetary affairs and
Commission B for economic affairs completed their discussions on
Wednesday.