Free ID cards planned but officials uninformed

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

The Tangerang municipal administration's manpower and population agency has announced that, starting April 1, residents may apply for free ID cards and birth certificates.

Subdistrict officials, however, replied that they were unaware of the plan.

The new policy is aimed at improving public services and eliminating bureaucracy and the imposition of illegal fees in subdistrict and district offices, where documents are processed, agency chief Ahmad Kosasih said last week.

Several staff members at the Cikokol subdistrict office, however, said on Monday that they had not been notified about the new free service.

One of them, Sisilawati, said that people usually paid anywhere between Rp 10,000 and Rp 15,000 for an identity card, even though the official fee is only Rp 3,500.

"They pay extra at their own will -- we've never asked them to pay more than the official fee," she claimed.

A 22-year-old resident, Jejen Darsono, said that he paid Rp 25,000 for an identity card -- and still had to wait for two months.

Separately, M. Ali, chief of the Babakan subdistrict, also said that he had not been informed about the free service of ID card applications.

He said that, if the administration plans to provide free ID cards, subdistrict offices must be provided with funds because his officers would need money to travel between district offices to process the documents.

Identity cards should be processed at the district office because subdistrict offices do not have a computerization system for producing the cards, he said.