Consumers' protection

Consumers' protection

From Media Indonesia

The Foundation of Indonesian Consumers Institution views the increase of the electricity tariff to be a burden to the majority of the population. A number of members of the House of Representatives also voice the same opinion. This demonstrates that the foundation has the interests of the people in mind.

To cite an example, if we pay an electricity bill of Rp 33.725 and the official rounds off the figure to Rp 33,800, the difference of Rp 75 does not seem really important. It may be worth one cigarette. But if that figure is multiplied by the number of customers, it comes to a huge amount of money. Then where does the money go? Such a practice of rounding off figures also happens in other places, like in supermarkets. But they give the customers a few candies to balance the change.

The society has to put up with many disadvantages of daily life, like poor road conditions, drinking water shortages, telephone failure, over-crowded buses, to mention but a few.

In spite of hard efforts to protect consumers, the foundation has not achieved much. Could it be because it is a private body? In my opinion, to improve the position of the foundation, and to make its programs more effective, it should be "adopted" by the National Committee of Human Rights. This committee was established in 1993 through Presidential decision No 50/1993 charged with tasks of monitoring and giving advice to the government concerning the implementation of the human rights. If this can be realized, dialog with other government institutions will be more probable in the effort to find solutions to various societal problems.

TJANDRA M. MULJADI

Jakarta