City pledges to improve service at subdistrict level

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Nur Widodo, 39, was baffled when he received a letter from the Cipayung district office in East Jakarta recently, ordering him to stop building his house, although he had gone through the proper channels.

He had a building permit from the building management and supervision division (P2B) of the district office, but the letter had been sent by another division.

"Officials at the district office apologized when I showed them the documents for my house. But, I had to ask myself why communication between the two divisions wasn't better," said Widodo, who is an activist with a non-governmental organization in Central Jakarta.

Widodo isn't alone in his frustration over the "shortfalls" of the city bureaucracy -- from subdistrict level up to the city administration.

A common complaint is over being charged for ID cards, although, officially, IDs should be issued free-of-charge. Illegal fees are also imposed on residents for other public services.

Secretary of the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Civil Servants Corps (Korpri) Parlindungan Hutabarat, said on Wednesday the city administration was aware of the poor performance of the bureaucracy.

He said the administration had organized a series of workshops on public service, involving 44 district heads and 267 subdistrict heads.

"The administration realizes the bureaucratic system isn't working as it should, it's aware of the problems associated with public service. With these workshops, we hope we will be able to improve the performance of the bureaucracy," he told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a workshop.

Wednesday's workshop, on effective communication, was the last of five workshops organized by the administration and Korpri. The previous workshops, which were run since August, discussed quantum leadership, customer care, the culture of service, and management quality.

Parlindungan said the workshops aimed to improve the knowledge and skills of the participants, so they could carry out their tasks as professionals at the front line of public service.

"We can't talk about Jakarta as a service city if we don't have officials that serve the public," he said.

Participants said the speakers had related their leadership experiences, which had been particularly helpful.

"The workshop was like a refresher course in what we studied at university. We gained a lot of new information about the administration's policies," said Pademangan Barat subdistrict head Atim Mulyani.

Parlindungan said that as follow-up, the administration planned to give subdistrict offices more authority in dealing with local problems, such as those related to sanitation and public order.

"For example, subdistrict offices will deal with their own garbage, which has been problematic for the administration," he said, adding that a pilot project of the program would be implemented in 50 subdistricts.