Giving of gratuities common in RI

Giving of gratuities common in RI

Yuli Tri Suwarni and Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Bandung/Medan

Diah Nurwitasari, a legislator of the Prosperous Justice Party
(PKS) at the West Java Legislative Council expressed serious
concern over gratuities given by a certain unit of the provincial
administration to a group of councillors following a recent
official visit by the latter to the office.

She said that ironically her colleagues were given the
gratuities to ignore an alleged financial leak at the office. The
money was raised from a fictitious official trip signed by a
number of officials of the office.

"The office head made the fictitious official trip program to
raise funds since the office didn't have a tactical fund," she
told The Jakarta Post recently, when asked to comment on the
existence of tactical funds in state institutions amid previous
reports of abuse and lack of accountability.

Diah said running a tactical fund and receiving gratuities had
become a common practice among local officials, private companies
and state institutions in the province but it was very difficult
to confirm the existence of such practices.

Citing another example, she said that West Java Governor Danny
Setyawan has allocated Rp 25 billion in tactical funds this
fiscal year, which was expected to grow as government officials
travel a lot, which means more unexpected expenses.

"It is no longer a secret that secretaries of regional
administrations in the province usually raise funds from numerous
legal and illegal sources to run the tactical funds used to cover
the numerous activities of local officials," she said, adding
that almost all private companies have given gratuities to local
administrations and officials to maintain their business
interests.

The provincial administration-owned Bank Jabar gave Rp 1
billion in gratuities to 100 members of the provincial
legislature in February 2004 for the latter's political support
for the bank's operation.

Enrizal Nazar, a member of the Bandung Municipal Council,
concurred and said the mayor and his senior staff had received
billions of rupiah in kickbacks from local companies which had
won development projects in the city.

Ikrimah Hamidy, a councillor of the Medan Municipal Council,
said the municipal administration had set up a tactical fund
financed from numerous sources to cover all unexpected expenses.

"The mayor is required to be accountable for tactical funds
coming from the city budget, while funds raised from city revenue
and third parties are not accounted for," he said.

Dedi Haryadi, a researcher and coordinator of the Bandung
Institute of Governance Studies (BIGS), confirmed that according
to BIGS's recent study, tactical funds are prone to manipulation
since they are partly raised from illegal sources. They are used
to finance unexpected payments and events and are not necessarily
accounted for.

"The trend in manipulating tactical funds is partly due to the
absence of rulings on tactical funds and the weak audit system
within the bureaucracy," he said.