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.