DLLAJ vows to speed up roadworthiness tests
JAKARTA (JP): A senior official pledged on Thursday to speed up services at the city's vehicle roadworthiness test stations in an attempt to reduce the number of drivers who preferred to hire middlemen to save time.
The head of the vehicle testing unit of the City Land Transportation Agency (DLLAJ), Abubakar Ahmad, said trials for the new process had already been carried out at the Ujung Menteng test station in East Jakarta.
"I'm making a big efforts to cut the time. In the near future, the procedure will only take 90 minutes, meaning that vehicle owners or drivers no longer need to wait for days to receive the results of their vehicle test," he told reporters and visiting councilors at Srengseng Sawah test station in South Jakarta.
Abubakar hoped the speedy procedure could further prevent vehicle owners from spending more money for the middlemen's services.
He revealed that there are groups of middlemen, both those who work for legal agents and individuals, currently operating in the city's five roadworthiness test stations.
Three other stations are located at Pulo Gadung in East Jakarta, Kedaung Kaliangke in West Jakarta and Cilincing in North Jakarta.
Many vehicle owners, Abubakar said, preferred to use the services of the middlemen to get their vehicles processed immediately.
Middlemen of one of the legal broker agents, PT Terminal Adi Persada, which belongs to Wahana Bhakti DLLAJR pension foundation, for example, required their customers to pay Rp 19,000 (US$1.80) for their help to speed up the testing procedures, he said.
Abubakar, however, did not disclose why the middlemen were able to speed up the process.
Many believe the middlemen share a portion of their service fee with the test stations' staff to get extra attention.
One of the visiting councilors, Elishman Iljas, said a driver had told him that he had to wait the whole day to get the test result while the driver's friend, who had hired a middleman, only took several hours to get the same result.
"The second driver paid a total of Rp 110,000 to the middleman for the quick service," Iljas quoted the driver as saying.
According to Abubakar, the new total official fares for the road worthiness service are Rp 21,000 for small trucks, Rp 159,600 for big buses, Rp 199,200 for double-decker buses, Rp 100,200 for medium-sized buses, Rp 59,600 for minivans and minibuses, Rp 35,000 for taxis and Rp 29,500 for bajaj (three- wheeled vehicles).
The councilors made the visit following recent reports on the collection of illegal levies at one of the test stations which forced car owners to pay Rp 105,000, instead of the official fee of Rp 21,000.
A few days later, 18 employees of the station were transferred to other posts following a thorough investigation into their alleged roles in collecting the illegal levies.
In an attempt to meet the public's complaints, Abubakar's office also abolished levies which had no legal grounds, including the Rp 2,500 for car washing, Rp 2,000 or Rp 3,000 (depending on the car type) for Organda (the public land transportation owners association) and Rp 1,000 for the development of Organda's Jakarta chapter office.
His office is also to stop the Rp 3,500 charge levied to compensate privately run PT Amanah for painting the wroadworthiness signs on the sides of vehicle. (ivy)