Govt must provide public services: Minister Ryaas

JAKARTA (JP): The government must provide public transportation, clean water and free identity cards as part of the services it has to offer the public in compensation for the collection of taxes and exploration of natural resources, says State Minister for Administrative Reform Ryaas Rasyid.

"Public transportation, clean water and identity cards are among those projects that must be subsidized as they are social facilities the government has to provide as its service to the public," he said in a hearing with the House of Representatives' Commission II on legal and home affairs here on Tuesday.

The minister opposed the government scheme in which the private sector partly subsidizes the provision of public transportation and clean water, saying it was against the concept of good governance.

"If the government is to be consistent, it must provide public transportation, clean water and identity cards for free and impose tariffs that are as low as possible as part of its public service.

"The government should be ready to suffer material losses in running the transportation and clean water businesses," he said, adding that it was strange that the private sector has been involved in the three sectors.

Provision of basic public services such as these should be treated as a way of evaluating whether the government is good or not, he added.

According to him, the people have a right to protest against the government for its poor services in the transportation sector because they have paid taxes to the government.

"Besides providing better transportation facilities, the government must also develop other facilities such as roads, bridges and special lines for cyclists and pedestrians," he said.

He said that developing a better transportation network and an adequate number of public transportation facilities, especially in urban areas, would support social efficiency and a bigger part of the population would no longer use their cars to commute to their places of work.

Bills

Ryaas said that the government would submit a bill on the central government, including on the composition of the Cabinet, in line with the implementation of regional autonomy this January.

He said the bill was needed to describe the central government's remaining authorities as a large part of these will be decentralized as stipulated by the laws on regional autonomy and on fiscal balance.

He said the bill would also set the process behind the composition of cabinets in the future with limited political flexibility for the president to exercise his/her prerogative rights.

"The bill also stipulates the number of state departments and other ministerial portfolios so that a president cannot form departments arbitrarily. The structure of cabinets in the future could be changed unless the law is revised," he said.

The minister said the government would also submit a bill on the administration's ethics to help create clean governance.

"The bill stipulates a code of conduct that all state officials and civil servants must comply with when providing their services to the public. It is also expected to effectively reduce to a minimum corrupt and collusive practices in the bureaucracy," he said.

Ryaas conceded that it was difficult to fight the prevailing corruption in the bureaucracy partly because of the absence of a code of conduct and because of the difficulties faced in finding concrete evidence for such corrupt and collusive practices.

"With the bill, a chief of an administration unit will be allowed to take action against any of his or her subordinates allegedly involved in corrupt practices," he said. (rms)