Monkey business?

The Jakarta administration's plan to spend some Rp 3.2 billion (about US$3.2 million) on the care of four African gorillas -- donations from a sister zoo in Britain to the Ragunan Zoo in South Jakarta -- is drawing fire from irate members of the Jakarta City Council (DPRD). And quite understandably so, considering the circumstances.

"It's unfair," fumed Azis Boeang, a legislator of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) faction in the council. "Why should the administration spend Rp 3.2 billion a year on subsidies to look after four gorillas while a proposed insurance plan for council members, which would cost no more than Rp 4.3 billion, is killed," he reportedly complained to the Jakarta newspaper Kompas.

To present Jakartans with a clearer picture of what it would cost them to maintain the four gorillas, another disgruntled DPRD member, Ridho Kamaludin, of the United Development Party (PPP) faction, came up with a more detailed calculation.

"A gorilla could live up to an age of 55 or 60 years," Ridho explained. "The primates are at present only five years old. That means the city might have to continue to pay for their care for 50 years or more. Imagine the costs involved."

Assuming that Rp 3.2 billion a year is indeed spent on the care of the gorillas, according to Ridho's calculations, the total amount expended would be roughly Rp 266.66 million a month, or Rp 8.8 million a day, which makes an average of Rp 2.2 million per primate per day.

"It would be all right to subsidize the gorillas as long as they produce revenue for the city administration. But in this case the income would only go to the Ragunan Zoo," he said. Not surprisingly, the complaints aired in the city's legislative council are readily echoed at the community level.

While people may argue about the need -- or, indeed, the propriety -- for the Jakarta city administration to spend a proposed Rp 4.3 billion a year in taxpayers' money to insure legislators in the city council, there can be no denying the fact that millions of people in the Indonesian capital are living in dire need and poverty.

For example, Jakarta's budget for this year sets aside a mere Rp 3.6 billion to support the so-called informal sector of the economy, which forms a major potential source of revenue for the city administration and comprises mostly small traders and other small-time private entrepreneurs by whose merit the city's economy has so far managed to persist, crisis upon crisis notwithstanding.

With hundreds of thousands of residents compelled by circumstances to live from hand to mouth, staying in cardboard shacks or sleep under bridges or the eaves of roadside shops during the night, people naturally question the administration's decision to spend Rp 8.8 million a day on the care of four gorillas.

One must appreciate the officials' apparent attention to the fate of the primates, but Rp 2.2 million a day per animal is for the overwhelming majority of Jakartans a staggering sum indeed. In a recent article in Kompas, Dr. Linus Simanjuntak, a prominent veterinarian and former director of the Ragunan Zoo, calculated that Rp 100,000 a day per gorilla would be more than enough.

The question on the lips of many Jakartans at present is, where will the rest of the money go? Suspicions of monkey business abound.

Considering the circumstances, Jakartans might have reason, after all, to be thankful for the recent "sweeps" by radicals of foreign residents in the city. At least that action has reportedly frightened the present owners of the gorillas in Britain into deferring sending the animals to Jakarta.

It is not very likely that the gorillas will meet an overly enthusiastic welcome in this city unless conditions improve sometime soon.