District bodies important: Experts

District bodies important: Experts

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Does the city of Jakarta still need district administrations?
East Jakarta Mayor Koesnan Abdul Halim thinks not, but other
local body experts disagree.

Koesnan announced his findings -- part of his doctorate
dissertation on local body administrations -- at the State
University of Jakarta (UNJ) last week. He argued that under the
existing system, the politically appointed district heads were
essentially superfluous because they doing little or nothing to
influence the work of subdistrict heads; those whom he said were
at the real front-lines in providing services to citizens.

Koesnan proposed scrapping the district level entirely, which
he said would save local governments' huge amounts of money;
funds which would be better allocated to subdistricts to increase
their services and performance.

However, two local body experts believe district officials are
still necessary, despite their poor track record of actually
getting anything done.

Suryono Herlambang of Tarumanagara University's Department of
Regional Planning suggested city administrations think of ways to
actively involve district heads in urban planning and other
development decisions.

"A district in Jakarta is quite similar (to districts in) big
cities in the Europe in terms of the number of residents, ranging
from 200,000 to 300,000. The relevant issue is how to make
officials at the district level better prepare plans and policies
for their residents," he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

"So far, we have witnessed more top-down policies made by
Sutiyoso's administration, which have proven too macroscopic when
it comes to their detailed application in the field. I think it
would be much better if the administration let officials at the
district level handle the formulation and implementation of these
policies," he said.

Suryono said the never-ending waste crisis in the city would
be solved faster if waste management policies were prepared and
developed at the district, rather than the provincial, level.

Another urban planner, Yayat Supriatna of Trisakti University,
said district heads in the capital were still needed to bridge
the wide gap in the coordination of programs between subdistricts
and municipalities.

"You can imagine how busy mayors would be if they had to
directly cope with scores of subdistricts with diverse problems
to solve. The idea (of abolishing districts) would likely put
mayors at risk of missing many (important) things because of
their huge workloads," he told the Post.

Jakarta has 267 subdistricts in total.

Yayat said city administrations needed to develop detailed
work plans and priorities for district heads to ensure they were
doing their jobs.

Each district head should also be made to deliver an annual
accountability report, he said.

"As of today, there is no clear ways for the public to measure
whether a district head is performing well or not, as the
district head is unilaterally handpicked by the governor."