NGO blasts misuse of school fund

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The City Education Department has allegedly marked up a fund used to renovate Jakarta's school buildings by more than 250 percent from the standard cost stipulated by the local administration this year.

"The fund allotted for the school renovation this year is simply nonsense. It has allegedly been marked up more than two and half times the real cost stipulated in the regulation," blasted Saidin Yusuf YP, an activist with Peduli Pendidikan Bangsa (P2B), a non-governmental organization monitoring schools in Jakarta.

Saidin said the cost for constructing a three-story elementary school building with six classrooms on 1,152 square meters of land was only Rp 1.7 billion (US$196,000).

"The cost is far lower than the hefty Rp 4.4 billion allocated by the administration to build such a school building," Saidin told The Jakarta Post last weekend.

His NGO also estimated that the cost for constructing a similar school building for a junior high school with 18 classrooms, was at Rp 4.9 billion as against more than Rp 14 billion allocated by the administration.

Saidin's NGO made the estimate of the construction costs in reference to Gubernatorial Decree No. 2656, 2002 on standard pricing of construction.

Such mark-up practices have continued for several years, Saidin asserted, against a background of the department's poor accountability and transparency in reporting the projects to the public.

Earlier on Wednesday, the City Council's Commission E for social welfare revealed that renovation projects in many schools had been marked up across the city.

The indications of corruption included the use of low quality building materials to skim off a larger profit and incomplete or inferior quality renovations.

Saidin revealed that his NGO would report their findings to the City Council, the Jakarta governor, police, and the Jakarta Prosecutors Office on Wednesday.

Jakarta has 1,699 elementary school buildings and 285 junior high school buildings out of which 68 and 33 buildings respectively need a complete overhaul.

However, head of the elementary and junior high school division of the Jakarta Education Department, Gito Purnomo said earlier that his department only planned to renovate 10 elementary schools and six junior high schools this year due to budget constraints.

But, his department has also proposed an additional fund of Rp 137.25 billion to finance the complete renovation of 20 elementary schools and 30 junior high schools, in addition to the renovation of 13 other junior high schools.

Another controversial report also revealed earlier by the high school division of the Jakarta Education Department cited that the city has allocated Rp 21 billion to build 51 classrooms for high schools and vocational high schools in 15 locations throughout the city.

This would mean that each classroom, measuring 8 meters by 9 meters, would cost a whopping Rp 412 million.

The city administration allocated Rp 94 billion this year to build new classrooms and to renovate a number of classrooms in high schools and vocational high schools which were in disrepair.

Jakarta has 1,775 high schools and 841 vocational high schools in total.