City, universities must boost cooperation: Rais
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)