City officials, police squabble over hoodlum fund
City officials, police squabble over hoodlum fund
JAKARTA (JP): While the operation against hoodlums has not yet
been accomplished, amid doubts by experts over its effectiveness,
the city administration and the police have now been involved in
an argument over the disbursement of the allocated Rp 4.07
billion fund.
City spokesman Muhayat said on Thursday that the city
administration had handed over Rp 1.05 billion (US$95,454) to the
Jakarta Police on April 23 to finance their operations against
hoodlums over the following three months.
The money is part of a total Rp 4.7 billion fund that would be
spent on the year-long operation against hoodlums.
"Of course, we did not disburse all the Rp 4.7 billion at
once, as we needed to wait for the yielding of the city's
income," Muhayat told reporters.
Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Anton Bahrul Alam
complained on Wednesday that the police only received Rp 1
billion instead of Rp 4.7 billion.
Earlier, many police officers who conducted raids against
hoodlums also grumbled, saying they had not received any money at
all.
Muhayat said Rp 675 million of the Rp 1.05 billion was
allocated for the city's five police precincts while the
remaining Rp 375 million was for Jakarta Police headquarters.
Police officers involved in the operations would receive Rp
15,000 daily in addition to their monthly salary, he said.
The operation against hoodlums has been held since April and
will last for a further nine months. This is part of a bigger
operation against "troubled" people including prostitutes and
panhandlers, conducted from last January through till the end of
this year. The whole operation will cost approximately Rp 30
billion.
Experts, however, doubt the effectiveness of the operation,
especially because it takes a repressive approach, saying that
the activities do not touch the core of the problem, which is
poverty.
City officials also reprimanded the police for frequently
complaining about "money".
"They only think about money. They should not be able to talk
about that," an official, who requested anonymity, told
reporters.
He said that the Rp 1.05 billion is probably kept by certain
high-ranking officials of the Jakarta Police for a certain period
of time so that their subordinates remained unaware of the fund
and did not question it.
Muhayat said on Tuesday that the city administration would
finance the operation using the 2001 City Budget.
He said that since the operation was declared by Jakarta
Governor Sutiyoso on April 16, as many as 161 hoodlums had been
arrested by the police for committing crimes such as extorting
money and carrying sharp weapons.
City Police Chief Insp. Gen. Mulyono Sulaiman had promised to
deploy 800 police officers to help city public order officers
fight the hoodlums. (jun)