DPRD Jakarta: empowered but not all that wiser

T. Sima Gunawan The Jakarta Post Jakarta

One is never too old to study. City councillors know the axiom well and took a shot at implementing it -- without worrying about the cost.

In the middle of this year, they made a series of trips overseas for what they claimed were comparative studies. Some took a one-week tour to Los Angeles to study entertainment and advertisement taxes. Some traveled to Mexico to learn about museum management, education and social welfare. There were also others who went to Paris to see how the city handled street vendors. To study disaster prevention and riots, they chose Japan and China.

While for garbage management, some councillors chose Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Vancouver, Canada.

The 2001 city budget allocated Rp 11.95 billion (about US$1.2 million) to cover the official trips of the 85 city councillors. As much as Rp 7 billion had already been spent for the foreign trips before the councillors were forced to halt them following mounting public criticism.

The trips amounted to nothing but a waste of money. The fund would have been better spent on the people's welfare as many were still struggling to survive the prolonged crisis that hit the country in 1997. It could have been used to subsidize public bus operators who could not afford the spare parts to maintain their vehicles.

Jakarta has more than 24,000 buses including those owned by private firms but since the economic crisis only 65 percent of them are still in operation.

Or, the fund could have been used to hire full-time teachers and to give them better payment instead of giving them just Rp 90,000 monthly each as part-time teachers. There are around 6,000 casual teachers and approximately 27,000 teachers employed as civil servants. Due to limited budget, the city was only able to recruit an additional 110 full-time teachers for this year.

A councillor said that conducting comparative studies abroad was useful, particularly as they gained knowledge, which enabled them "to argue with the executive in a discussion about certain subjects."

So far, there has been no official explanation or report on the results of the trips. They even seemed embarrassed to talk with the media about what they had learned during the tours.

None of them offered useful ideas to solve the various problems facing the people and the city administration. With no critical stance, they usually just accepted policies of Governor Sutiyoso and other officials even if they were not in favor of the people.

One obvious case was the city plan to allocate Rp 3.2 billion a year for four gorillas which would be imported from Britain for the city-owned Ragunan Zoo. The City Council gave their approval, but when it was criticized extensively in the mass media, some councillors claimed they actually did not agree. They said they were just forced to approve the plan, which showed how subservient they are to the city administration.

The councillors did not utter a word when thousands of people who live in slums lost their homes due to forced eviction by city public order officers. They also said nothing about the street vendors, becak (pedicab) drivers and those in the informal employment sector who became the target of raids by the city administration.

When Sutiyoso panicked over the closure of the Bantar Gebang garbage dump by the Bekasi administration, the councillors, including those who had taken comparative studies on waste management abroad, did not provide any useful solutions, apparently because they failed to understand the real problem.

The councillors seemed to realize their limited knowledge. So, some took undergraduate studies in political science at 17 Agustus University, or the masters program in management at the Jagakarsa Institute of Economics.

Each of the councillors is allocated Rp 10 million (US$909) a year from the city budget for educational purposes.

Those who did not enter degree programs were allowed to use the money for taking courses, such as English language courses.

But the spending of tax-payers money to finance their education had enraged some activists from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, who once staged a protest, unfurling several posters stating: "Stupid councillors should resign", "People suffer because their councillors are stupid".

And, as if in response to the criticism, in an effort to enhance their cerebral functions, a total of 60 councillors took a short course in early November called "Brainwave Management Training" to improve their "brain power".

Council chairman Edy Waluyo said the councillors, taking the training, were expected to improve their emotional intelligence and adopt productive and efficient habits.

In many ways, showing a lack of mature emotional intelligence, the councillors had acted like spoilt children.

They complained that the council building, located on Jl. Kebon Sirih, Central Jakarta, was too small and no longer appropriate for their activities.

The councillors demanded a new, spacious building with a health center complete with a sauna similar to the one in the city administration building.

The administration finally agreed to expand the current building at a cost of Rp 30.56 billion.

Long before that, 55 councillors asked for a new sedan even though they had already received Rp 75 million as a transportation allowance upon their installment as a councillor. The other 30 councillors had already received new cars.

They bought 55 Hyunday Accent sedans for Rp 5.8 billion, taken from the city budget reserve funds, which resulted in a delay in the purchase of several garbage trucks.

Worse still, several city officials were then questioned in connection with a reported markup in the purchase of the sedans, which were exempt of taxes.

Another thing the councillors asked for was life insurance. They asked the city to pay a Rp 4.25 billion life insurance premium. When the plan was rejected by the city administration, councillor Azis Boeang was upset as he felt that the administration had paid more attention to the four gorillas -- to be imported from Britain for the Ragunan Zoo -- than to the councillors.

The councillors actually had received more than enough. Their monthly salary is Rp 7 million each, and they are entitled to several allowances, which all together total about Rp 70 billion. The monthly income of each councillor could reach between Rp 60 million and Rp 80 million.

One of their main duties is the drafting of bylaws. They were expected to pass at least 15 bylaws this year, but only eight bylaws had been completed, all of which were drafted by the city administration.

It seems that most of them did not have any knowledge of bylaws that had been passed by their predecessors. When the media reported the case of a military officer and his wife, a policewoman, who tortured their domestic helpers, and asked some councillors about legal protection for housemaids, most of them just shrugged off the question. They were unaware of a bylaw on domestic helpers that was enacted into law in 1993.