City to target unruly civil servants
JAKARTA (JP): The municipality is to launch a major crackdown on disobedient civil servants at City Hall in a bid to strengthen discipline.
Toha Reno, head of the city's public order subdivision, told The Jakarta Post yesterday that the program will restart early next month.
"The implementation of the disciplinary movement at City Hall has been put on hold since Sutiyoso assumed office as the new governor in September.
"The crackdown will target civil servants with bad habits, ranging from coming late, carelessly parking their cars, littering, smoking in the nonsmoking areas and not wearing the correct uniforms."
Toha admitted that many factors hindered the enforcement of discipline among municipality officials.
"To encourage the officials to arrive at work on time, for instance, is difficult to do because many of them live outside Jakarta, in Bekasi, Tangerang or Bogor," he said. "But this does not mean that the municipality will be lenient."
About 200 minibuses have been organized to transport the workers but only 50 of the vehicles are operating, he said.
The crackdown will act as shock therapy for the workers, Toha said.
There will be routine disciplinary patrols in all offices and agencies at City Hall, to be conducted between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. every day.
"We take a friendly but firm approach to upholding discipline. But, in certain cases, the violators must be punished."
Toha said that his office was considering the suitable forms of punishment and reward to be applied
"A warning, in the form of physical punishment, is not completely effective. There must be some guidelines for gentler punishment which stops bad habits."
The National Disciplinary Movement (GDN) was officially initiated by President Soeharto in 1993 and Jakarta is piloting the project.
Some high-ranking officials have admitted that another problem hindering the movement's implementation is the lack of funds.
"The city, for example, could only afford to pay meal allowances for the GDN officers during former governor Surjadi Soedirdja's term of office. That was why they could only operate once a week on Mondays," Toha said.
Despite the lack of funds, however, the municipality will be enforcing the rules, at least at City Hall, he said.
Governor Sutiyoso had earlier pledged to enforce the discipline movement among his staff members.
Once he caught an official falling asleep during a task and Sutiyoso remarked: "This kind of thing should not happen again. If I can wake up early, so can you." (07)