Nurfaizi donates cars, motorbikes

JAKARTA (JP): Insp. Gen. Nurfaizi ended his 10-month term as the City Police chief on a remarkable note, thanks to a fleet of 22 imported cars and 17 trail bikes he donated to the institution he had formerly led.

"Pak Nurfaizi bought the vehicles with his own money," Jakarta Police spokesman Supt. Muhammad Nur Haji Usman told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Nur said the donation, worth about Rp 5 billion, would help the City Police personnel perform their daily operations.

He added all of the motorbikes had been received by the City Police. The police had also received three fully imported KIA Carnival cars.

Nurfaizi officially handed over his post to Brig. Gen. Mulyono Sulaiman in a ceremony presided over by National Police chief Gen. Surojo Bimantoro on Saturday.

Nurfaizi has been assigned as the head of the National Police Training Center and will have his rank promoted to commissioner general.

Nurfaizi's present is a stark contrast to the low salaries most of police in the country have repeatedly complained about.

"Police should be well-recruited, well-educated, well-trained, and well-paid. The last of these requirements is certainly absent here (in Indonesia)," Nur said on Friday, in response to the arrest of eight Mobile Brigade officers for alleged motorcycle theft.

Police also say that the low pay stems from the low budget allocated for the police.

In May, Nurfaizi asked the city administration to increase the allocated budget for city police because the Rp 900 million (US$103,448) annual budget was too small to finance police operations and activities.

Nurfaizi argued that the City Police should receive a bigger percentage of the local budget since the police contributed some Rp 6 billion a day to the city administration's revenue through, among other things, taxes imposed on motorists applying for driving licenses, and vehicle registration numbers.

The City Police has around 18,000 personnel.

Governor Sutiyoso ruled out any possibility of granting the city police additional finance for operational expenditures, saying that the minimal financial support the police have received from the city administration should not make them "lower" the standard of their public services. (jaw)