Eleven fired for misuse of villages aid funds

Eleven fired for misuse of villages aid funds

JAKARTA (JP): Eleven low-level bureaucrats have been fired for
embezzling government funds, earmarked for the development of
impoverished villages, an official said yesterday.

The Ministry of Home Affairs' Inspector General Soedardjat
Nataatmadja said those who lost their jobs were 10 village chiefs
and one subdistrict head.

"They have disrupted efforts to create a clean and respectable
government," Soedardjat said in a hearing with the House of
Representatives Commission II overseeing home affairs.

The subdistrict chief of Kimaan, Irian Jaya, M.Z. Udiata, was
fired for embezzling Rp 12.2 million (about US$5,500) of funds
provided under a presidential decree.

The village chiefs, in Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi, lost their
jobs for stealing between Rp 1 million and Rp 13 million from the
funds.

Under the decree, for under-developed rural areas, the
government provided Rp 20 million to each 20,633 impoverished
villages nationwide in the past fiscal year, 1994/95.

Soedardjat said the ministry, through Post Box 5000 belonging
to the vice president, has so far received 262 letters reporting
alleged abuses of the funds.

He said weak supervision and poor discipline among lower level
bureaucrats were to blame for the widespread corruption of the
government funds.

He also disclosed that the government Audit Agency recently
found 468 cases of financial irregularities in agencies under the
Ministry of Home Affairs.

"The Ministry of Home Affairs is the most extensive
bureaucracy, so it is normal the most irregularities are found
there," Soedardjat told reporters after the hearing.

The agency's chairman, Soedarjono, disclosed on Monday that
during the first semester of the fiscal 1994/95 year, the audit
agency found that irregularities in the home affairs ministry
caused the state to lose Rp 1 billion ($480,000). It was a 906
percent increase from the Rp 113 million ($55,000) loss of the
1993/94 fiscal year. (29)