Grant projects ignore the public

JAKARTA: The Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) said on Thursday that the implementation of projects involving foreign grants in the country still ignored public participation and transparency.

Teten Masduki of ICW said foreign countries had indeed new concepts that demanded that the government carry out grant projects transparently, but they closed their eyes to the poor project implementation.

"There is not much change from the way projects with foreign grants were implemented in the New Order regime," he told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of a seminar on foreign grant projects research.

"Local people must start to participate in any projects that will affect them," he added.

He cited the Dombo-Sayung irrigation project in Lampung, carried out during former President Soeharto tenure that has continued up to now, which created prolonged conflict over land in the area.

Juan Planas of the Delegation of the European Commission said that the European Union (EU) required transparency in all grant projects and monitoring of their implementation.-JP