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.