City Hall's debts to PT Telkom Rp 3.84b

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration's outstanding debt to state-owned telecommunications operator PT Telkom amounted to Rp 3.84 billion over the last two years, Guntur Siregar, head of the firm's Jakarta office said on Monday.

Guntur said that Rp 2.9 billion of the total debt was incurred in 1998, while the other Rp 937 million accumulated in 1997.

"We have sent the administration notification letters ... but no answers are forthcoming. We can't possibly cut its phone lines, as after all it is the administration," he said in a meeting between representatives of PT Telkom and city councilors.

He added that out of the two million telephone lines in the capital, 250,000 of them were used to receive calls only.

"The people renting those 250,000 lines pay only Rp 22,500 per month, whereas to maintain the line itself now costs Rp 65,000," Guntur said.

He claimed that the company each month found that an average of four percent of the 36,000 public telephones in the capital were out of order.

"To fix a public telephone line costs Rp 5 million today, substantially up from only Rp 2 million before the crisis," Guntur said.

He also said that last year nearly 130,000 telephone line subscriptions were canceled by customers. Most of these were from office complexes on Jl. Thamrin, Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Rasuna Said.

Among the reasons given for the cancellations were the May riots and the liquidation of banks.

Ali Wongso Sinaga, head of Commission D for development affairs, said at the meeting that the use of telephones was a primary need for city residents, and the 15 percent increase in domestic tariffs, rolled back from 24 percent earlier, was still not acceptable.

He said this was too much of a burden on the hundreds of thousands of people here who had to put up with the skyrocketing price of other necessities such as food, house rent and electricity.

"If the central government cannot abolish the 15 percent hike in phone rates, I demand that at least it be postponed," Ali said.

Ali said that PT Telkom must try to improve its efficiency in the operation and maintenance of telephone lines.

"Jakartans are suffering. This is no time for Telkom to prioritize its business interests."

Just abolishing the Zone III category, Ali said, was "not enough" either.

The Zone III category, which was imposed in the greater Jakarta and Bandung areas, sparked the strongest furor because it effectively raised call rates by up to 3,000 percent for calls made during busy hours to a distance of between 30 kilometers and 200 kilometers. (ylt/ind)