Council irked by poor reports on education fund use

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The City Council blasted on Friday poor financial reports on the use of the 2004 city budget for education, saying the reports gave the impression that city officials were unprofessional and not serious in handling taxpayers' money.

"We have examined 14 offices out of 30 offices with the City Elementary Education Agency and we discovered problems in most financial reports made by those offices," the chairman of the council's Commission E for education and people's welfare, Dani Anwar, announced after a hearing with North Jakarta elementary education office on Friday.

Dani, who appeared to be infuriated by the state of the reports, said his commission, for instance, found that the North Jakarta elementary education office had failed to explain its spending in its financial report.

"For example, the office states in its report that it distributed books and pencils worth Rp 650 million (US$69,148) to poor students, but it failed to attach necessary data about the recipients."

The office also spent Rp 77 million on purchasing filing cabinets, but failed to detail how many it bought, he said.

Councillor Syamsidar Siregar lambasted poor coordination between the City Finance Bureau and city offices following the finding of a significant difference of up to Rp 598 million between the report made by the bureau and that of the Central Jakarta elementary education office.

"The City Finance Bureau reported that the office spent Rp 17.44 billion compared to the office's report of some Rp 16.9 billion," Syamsidar said.

The commission also discovered that some offices shared some programs, and each listed the same amounts in spending, such as the procurement of desks, chairs and blackboards for schools amounting to Rp 35 million.

The commission also found that the North Jakarta elementary education office had a project "to draw up programs and operations", which ate up Rp 200 million. None of the other offices, however, had such a project.

North Jakarta elementary education office head Iwan Setiawan denied there were irregularities in his financial report, but was unable to give the required explanations.

"We will try to complete the necessary data required by the commission later," Iwan said.

Last month, Commission E also noted alleged embezzlement of around Rp 133 million in assistance funds for poor students at state junior high school 232, Pisangan, Pulogadung, East Jakarta.

The assistance funds, which were meant to provide scholarships to 798 poor students, had been used to purchase equipment, like furniture, a TV, a photocopy machine and an air-conditioner. The commission said the television, air-conditioner and furniture were for the principal's room.

The police have dropped the case, saying no offense had been committed.