'Clean culture' should start at City Hall

'Clean culture' should start at City Hall

JAKARTA (JP): Ery Chajaridipura, head of the City Development
Planning Agency, said yesterday that "clean culture" should start
with City Hall, the center of the capital's activities.

"The City Hall has to clean itself up first before encouraging
the public to follow suit," Ery said on behalf of Vice Governor
of Economic and Development Affair Tb. Rais at a Clean Friday
Movement activity at City Hall.

"People come to this place to process a wide variety of
documents. Their visit means that they evaluate City Hall
conditions and then take it as an example. If the conditions are
clean, we hope they will apply it to their surrounding areas," he
said.

He also said that the Clean Friday Movement should not be
conducted only on Friday, but on other days as well because
sanitation is, among other things, important for health.

Governor Surjadi Soedirdja said recently that the Clean Friday
campaign will be aggressively promoted as just one part of the
city administration's overall plans to clean up Jakarta.

Jakarta as the capital city of Indonesia should become a model
city in terms of cleanliness. If the campaign is successful,
other regional cities will follow suit, the governor said.

At yesterday's Clean Friday Movement activity, Ery and a team
of the city administration noted a number of improved sanitation
conditions around City Hall.

However, the team also found some other City Hall locations in
a sub-standard state of disarray. One City Hall waiting room was
littered with an empty fire extinguisher and broken chairs, while
the bathrooms were wretched with no garbage bags.

"The broken, old utensils piling up in the corner of a room
disturb and prevent the officers from giving services as best as
they can," Ery said, adding that this leaves a bad impression
with those coming to City Hall to process business permits and
other documents.

"City Hall should provide good service to the public," he
reiterated. "How can it if the facilities in the office are
damaged?" he interjected after ordering the officers to get busy
repairing any broken facilities.

If the work flows, he concluded, there is no longer the need
for the public to wait for hours before their documents are
processed.

The field inspection was a part of the Clean Friday Movement,
which was launched by President Soeharto during the opening of
Pondok Gede Haj Hospital on Nov. 12, 1994. (31)