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.