City, universities must boost cooperation: Rais

BANDUNG (JP): The Jakarta municipality and universities need to strengthen cooperation to help detect new developments within society, Deputy Governor for Economic and Development Affairs Tb.M. Rais said.

He said that strengthening such cooperation was important because the municipality did not have enough facilities or human resources to detect all new developments by itself.

Rais made the remarks at the opening of a two-day seminar Thursday night presenting the results of surveys jointly conducted by the city administration and state universities.

"We have to admit shortcomings. That's why we need better cooperation with universities in order to detect all new developments," he said.

For instance, he said, the number of municipality officials did not increase much over the past few years, despite the sharp increase in city population.

Jakarta's population, he said, was nine million at night, but soared to 12 million during the day.

"How could the municipality's 73,000 civil servants, including elementary school teachers, provide services for such a large population?" Rais said.

He said that it was impossible for Jakarta's nine million people to wait for satisfactory services from city officials. "While on the other hand, people continue to demand better and faster services," he said.

"However, we should not focus on the limited number of officials as the major reason for not noticing new changes within society," he said.

"City officials should realize that any changes within society are the result of our own development, and we have to do something about that," Rais said.

He cited as example the municipality giving information on emission tests on vehicles along the city's major thoroughfares before the tests were actually conducted.

"We can't just use a power approach by conducting it randomly, without first giving an initial announcement. People are getting increasingly critical, so we have to use an acceptable approach," Rais said.

The cooperation with universities, he said, was expected to function as a tool to determine the municipality's approach before implementing it in its policies.

"We want an up-to-date approach that can be accepted by the public," Rais said.

He admitted, however, that the city could not promise much funding to finance the research conducted jointly with universities on various issues in the municipality.

"I expect research will not only benefit the municipality to help the decision-making process, but will also benefit universities and the people," Rais said.

Nine out of 32 studies on municipality issues were presented at the seminar, which was organized by the Jakarta municipality and Bandung-based Padjadjaran University (Unpad).

Among state-owned universities cooperating with the municipality were Bandung Institute of Technology, Unpad and the University of Indonesia. (ste)