City Hall's debts to PT Telkom Rp 3.84b
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)