Fuel 'subsidy' for House criticized
Fuel 'subsidy' for House criticized
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The move by the House of Representatives to provide a new monthly
allowance of Rp 10 million (about US$1,000) for fellow lawmakers
drew strong criticism on Friday.
All 550 House members will receive the new allowances for six
months starting in November, reportedly as compensation for the
recent fuel price hike.
The size of the allowance was much greater than the Rp 100,000
monthly cash given by the government to some 15.4 million poor
families across the country to cushion the impact of the fuel
hike.
"This is an unfair policy, particularly as the allowance is
100 times larger than the cash subsidy for the poor," said Fahmi
Badoh of the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW).
He said that the lawmakers should not be given a new monthly
allowance as they already received a more-than-adequate monthly
income of over Rp 29 million.
In comparison, more than half of the country's 220 million
people live on less than $2 a day.
Fahmi said that the lawmakers had received such a huge
increase because they were supposed to use part of it to finance
visits to their constituents across the country. "But in reality,
they seldom meet with the people who elected them."
University of Indonesia political analyst Arbi Sanit also
described the policy as unfair.
"This is what we call an unfair policy; made by both the
executive and the legislative branches," he was quoted by Antara
as saying.
He feared that the policy would further lower the confidence
of the people in the House, which has been criticized for its
poor legislation performance, as evidenced by the extremely low
number of bills passed during the first year of their five-year
term.
The move to provide the new monthly allowance for the House
members comes at a time when some lawmakers, particularly from
the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the
National Awakening Party (PKB), planned to launch a campaign for
the House to hold an extraordinary plenary meeting in a bid to
force the government to review the fuel hike policy. Some
lawmakers have criticized the fuel price hike for being too
excessive.
The government on Oct. 1 raised fuel prices an average of more
than 126 percent in a bid to help ease the burden on the state
budget in covering the cost of the fuel subsidy, which had
consumed about one-fifth of the annual state budget amid soaring
international oil prices. Many have criticized the policy, with
some lawmakers claiming that they had only given approval for the
government to raise fuel prices by around 30 percent.
Meanwhile, House deputy speaker Zaenal Ma'arif said that the
additional monthly allowances for lawmakers was not made to
compensate for the new fuel prices because the policy had been
discussed with the government long before the fuel price hike was
announced.
He was quoted by news portal detik.com as saying that the
higher allowance was needed by the lawmakers to help finance
their various activities, including visits to constituents.
Ade Daud Nasution, a legislator from the Reform Star Party,
dismissed the suggestion that the lawmakers were taking home a
huge sum of money each month.
He said that in "reality" he had to allocate a lot of his
monthly salary for his party, for costs incurred while visiting
constituents and donations for non-governmental organizations.
"I end up bringing home only about Rp 5 million (each month),"
he added.