Influential notes still hover around bids

JAKARTA (JP): Personal memorandums aimed at influencing selection in tenders are still widespread, a leader of the Association of Indonesian Builders said.

Daniel Hutapea, leader of the association's city branch, said yesterday these memorandums, known as surat sakti (powerful memos) come from high ranking officials in the government, political parties and mass organizations.

Daniel asked that all project officers submit these memorandums to the association, who would make them public.

"When we visited a number of city agencies we found there are still many memorandums which influence the bidding process for municipality projects," Daniel said after submitting a list of contractors to the Central Jakarta mayoralty and the city's fire department.

The Antara news agency quoted Daniel as saying that the fire department is one of the city agencies which receives many of these memorandums.

Daniel also urged project officers to be courageous in rejecting the requests made in these memorandums. Parties which should be rejected are also those which do not have association membership cards, he said.

Based on a gubernatorial instruction, all bidding participants must be members of the association to ease control over builders who breach contracts.

Daniel said the association had reached an agreement with the city tax office on overcoming the problem of lost accounts.

He said most builders' employees are contract-based instead of regular workers, which might partially be why the accounts get lost.

To overcome this problem the city tax office and the association agreed on a 1.5 percent tax cut from the total project value, without the prior inspection of accounts by tax officials.

This method is already applied by the tax office to real estate developers, Daniel added. (anr)