Council wastes public's money on meeting in resort hotel

Council wastes public's money on meeting in resort hotel

Ahmad Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

City councillors are again spending millions of rupiah of
public money by conducting a two-day meeting with city officials
at the Horison Hotel in North Jakarta to discuss the proposed
2002 budget.

At least 15 councillors grouped under the council's special
budgetary team and dozens of city officials attended the meeting
which started on Wednesday.

Chairman of the council's commission D for development affairs
Sayogo Hendrosubroto claimed that the meeting was arranged by the
city administration.

"I preferred a meeting at the council building actually. The
memo announcing the meeting reached my desk only yesterday,"
Sayogo of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle said.

However, Sayogo's claim did not have much credence in light of
the fact that the meeting had been arranged long before and
several rooms at the hotel were booked well in advance.

A receptionist with the hotel said the councillors and
officials were provided with suites priced between Rp 1.1 million
(US$110) and Rp 3.3 million per night.

Separately, City Council Spokesman Muhayat admitted that the
meeting was financed by the city administration, not the city
council.

"We just booked a meeting hall and two rooms for the
secretariat. It's not much, " Muhayat told The Jakarta Post on
Wednesday.

Last year, they also held a similar budget meeting in the
Horison, which is partly owned by the city administration.

Last week, all of the city's 85 councillors and hundreds of
city officials organized a two-day budget meeting, which
reportedly cost Rp 1.5 billion, at the city-owned resort Wisma
Jaya Raya in Puncak, Bogor.

The Puncak meeting, which ended without producing any
decisions last week, also wasted money since most of rooms
provided for the participants were not used, as most of the
participants preferred to go home rather than stay at the resort.

Besides the rooms, meals which were provided by the resort
were also wasted since most of the participants had their lunch
at restaurants outside the resort.

The Puncak meeting was considered ineffective due to the
number of participants. It was then continued at the council
building in Jakarta.

The city officials are believed to be using the Horison
meeting as a way of securing the councillors' approval on their
proposed budget, which amounts to Rp 8.9 trillion.

During the meetings in Puncak and the council building, the
councillors threatened to cut some fund allocations in the
budget, which they said seem redundant and could be siphoned off
by corrupt officials.