Government ends stamp crisis

JAKARTA (JP): The city post office headquarters plans to distribute tax stamps (meterai) to main post offices in the five mayoralties today in a bid to end the tax stamp crisis that has gripped the city over the past several days.

Deputy chief of the post office headquarters Budi A. Prasetyo told Antara yesterday that the move is expected to cut the number of people flocking the headquarters to buy the tax stamps.

The post office headquarters in Lapangan Banteng, Central Jakarta, has been swamped by thousands of people wanting to purchase revenue stamps, following the "disappearance" of the stamps at other points of distribution over the past three days.

At 6 a.m. at the Lapangan Banteng post office yesterday there were long queues of people wishing to buy the stamps, which are evidence of payment of duty on many legal documents.

"I hope that people do not believe the rumors that our employees are exploiting the crisis by colluding with traders for personal gain," Budi said.

The stamp crisis began after the government, in response to reports of widespread counterfeiting, stopped printing the old version of the tax stamp and replaced it with a new one. The value of the stamps was also raised from Rp 1,000 to Rp 2,000.

Kompas reported yesterday that the state company Peruri, which prints the tax stamps, delivered 125,000 of them to the post office headquarters on Monday. (pan)