Free ID cards planned but officials uninformed

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.