NGOs accuse council of budget mark up

Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (FITRA) and Jakarta Parliament Watch (JPW) announced on Monday that the City Council had marked up its operational budget allocation by up to Rp 68.37 billion (US$7.24 million) in the 2002 City Budget.

Speaking at the "City Councillor and the Waste of City Budget" seminar at Hotel Wisata, Central Jakarta, both nongovernmental organizations revealed their findings that the most significant markups had been found in health expenditure and official traveling.

Both FITRA and JPW have been carrying out intensive research on the budget since 2000, based on Government Regulation No. 109/2000, which stipulates the fund allocation for legislative bodies. The regulation states that the allocation must be based on regional revenues.

A province with a regional revenue of Rp 15 billion must allocate between Rp 150 million and 1.75 percent of the Rp 15 billion for the legislative budget. Provinces with revenues of more than Rp 500 billion must allocate between Rp 1.25 billion and 0.15 percent of their revenue.

As Jakarta's annual revenue totals Rp 3.5 trillion, the capital should have allocated Rp 52.5 billion. In fact the city has allocated Rp 88.37 billion, far more than the allocation allowed by the regulation.

Given that the budget is over the limit as stipulated by the regulation, FITRA spokesman, Jammarudin, accused the council of wasting Rp 68.37 billion, saying the budget should only have been Rp 20 billion at the most.

"The large discrepancy in the figures show that there were irregularities between the city administration and councillors in preparing the city budget. We have found that there was a conspiracy between the administration and the council to satisfy certain vested interests, which are the political parties," he said.

Jammarudin disclosed the markup in the health allocation.

"The administration allocated Rp 6 billion annually for healthcare insurance for the 84 councillors. When we calculated it, based on an assumption that the councillors would have gold health insurance, the administration should only have allocated Rp 528 million," he said, stating that the number of councillors had reduced from the original 85 after councillor Azis Boeang of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle died.

Jammarudin also pointed out that the allocation for traveling was marked up from Rp 5.36 billion to Rp 6.6 billion.

Both FITRA and JPW pointed out the markup and the budget allocation leakages were to enrich the pockets of political parties as they needed money to face the 2004 general election.

"They desperately need the money for their campaign budgets for the 2004 election. That's why they have abused their tenure to acquire as much cash as they can," said JPW spokesman Ivan Prapat.