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)