Council suspects markup in elevator procurement

Damar Harsanto, Jakarta

The City Council has alleged there has been a markup in the procurement of an elevator for the National Monument (Monas) tower in Central Jakarta by the Jakarta Culture and Museum Agency.

"We have discovered that the elevator, which is currently operating at Monas, has different specifications from the product type stipulated in the 2003 city budget," said councillor Syamsidar Siregar of the National Mandate Party (PAN) faction on Wednesday.

Syamsidar visited the monument along with seven other councillors from different factions, including Ahmad Heryawan of the Justice Party (PK) faction and Audi Tambunan of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) faction, to check the elevator's condition.

According to Syamsidar, the administration was supposed to install a Japan-made Hitachi elevator in the monument. Instead, the agency installed a China-made Hitachi elevator.

"We suspect that the lower price (of the elevator) might be related to the quality," she said.

The elevator was open for use in January this year, but has already twice experienced technical problems.

On May 2, the elevator was inoperable for around two hours, leaving dozens of visitors trapped on the upper observation deck of the 117-meter-high tower. The automatic lock on the elevator door was damaged when visitors rushed into the elevator, which is only able to take a maximum load of 10 people, or 800 kilograms.

The visitors were evacuated through the emergency exit, a steep 450-step staircase.

On March 23, dozens of kindergarten children were trapped inside the elevator after the power went off.

Syamsidar urged the city audit agency to immediately examine the procurement of the elevator to check whether there has been any irregularities.

The 2003 city budget specified that the cost to procure and install the elevator reached around Rp 1.7 billion (US$196,532)

Governor Sutiyoso had ordered the Monas management on Tuesday to stop its operation for a month starting Wednesday to have the elevator repaired.

But on Wednesday, the management was still operating the elevator as usual.

"Did you get the information that the elevator was not working from the newspaper? As you can see, it works well. The information was wrong," said Iwan Darmawan, the employee on duty.

Another employee at the ticket booth also said that there was no problem with the elevator.

However, many visitors were still reluctant to use it.

"The Monas management suggested we visit the observation deck, but we decided not to. We don't want to take any risk using the elevator," said a mother.

She was accompanying her son, one of 100 students of Al-Azhar private elementary school in Tangerang, who were on a school excursion to the monument. None went to the upper observation deck, but spent time on the lower observation deck.

A visitor need only pay Rp 1,500 for the ticket to enter the lower observation deck and the monument display room. To visit the upper observation deck, one must pay an extra Rp 5,000.

Besides procuring the elevator, the culture and museum agency also allocated Rp 1.6 billion for the procurement of air- conditioners for the monument.