Councillors agree to scrap costly life insurance fund

Councillors agree to scrap costly life insurance fund

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In an attempt to deflect mounting public criticism over the
proposed 2002 city budget, City Council said Wednesday that it
would ask the city administration to scrap life insurance and
travel fund benefits for councillors.

Briefing reporters at his office room, City Council head Eko
Waluyo said that councillors had agreed to rescind a hefty Rp
4.25 billion fund that was proposed to buy life insurance for 85
council members.

"We've agreed to scrap the life insurance from the proposed
budget -- but we cannot drop the travel fund, as we may need it
later; we can only decrease it," Eko said.

The head of the council's commission C overseeing financial
and budgetary affairs, Anna Rudhiantiana, said the Council had
agreed to cut the travel fund down to Rp 1.9 billion from a
controversial total of Rp 11.9 billion.

The councillors had been repeatedly attacked by the public and
non-governmental organizations for their foreign trips last year,
which they claimed were for comparative studies but, in fact,
turned out to be only for pleasure.

According to Anna, the councillors had not planned to travel
abroad this year.

The councillors would only travel abroad for "comparative
studies" if the host countries made a commitment to financing
their trips, she said.

Despite such goodwill efforts on the part of the councillors,
some people observed that council would not make any corrections
to the proposed budget, since they want to enjoy benefits from
it.

Azas Tigor Nainggolan, leader of the Jakarta Residents Forum,
warned on Tuesday that the councillors might approve what he
characterized as a bizarre budget, as the City Council has
allocated more than Rp 102 billion this year -- up, notably, from
Rp 76 billion last year.

Wasilah Sutrisno, a councillor from Commission E of Social
Welfare, lambasted the proposed budget, saying it was full of
irregularities and prone to corruption, as many fund allocations
in the budget draft had not been made in the public interest.

According to Wasilah, unclear stipulation over more than Rp 1
trillion allocated for social improvements, might lend itself to
manipulation.

Sutiyoso has announced that the administration had planned to
increase the budget by nearly 10 percent, up significantly to Rp
8.9 trillion from last year's 8.1 trillion.