Overseas trip findings of limited use: Councillors

Overseas trip findings of limited use: Councillors

JAKARTA (JP): City councillors who went on a comparative study
trip about disaster management in Japan and China officially
acknowledged on Friday that the results could not be applied
here.

Deputy chairman of Commission A for legal and administrative
affairs Syarifien Maloko said it was not feasible to build a
crisis center like the one in Tokyo, which the councillors
visited last week during their seven-day trip.

"We learnt that the center has only been used three times to
handle disasters, such as earthquakes, in the past 10 years. We
think it is not urgent to build such a crisis center," Syarifien
said.

He also stated that Jakarta could not implement an integral
system as applied by Tokyo's fire headquarters.

He said the fire headquarters could reach a fire scene within
five minutes due to supportive urban planning and design, whereas
urban planning and design in Jakarta does not support the fire
department in this way.

"We have many cases where there is very little access for our
fire agency to reach a fire location because of poor urban design
and layout," Syarifien of the Crescent and Star Party said.

He denied, however, that the trip -- which attracted
widespread public criticism, as it was considered inefficient and
a waste of money -- was useless, saying that it had widened his
knowledge.

Council chairman Edy Waluyo said that following the trip, the
city council would reject a proposal to build a similar crisis
center in the city.

"It's better to have spent hundreds of millions of rupiah on
the trip than to build a crisis center that would cost billions
of rupiah," Edy told reporters.

All the 18 councillors involved in the trip denied that they
went just for fun.

"Don't make an accusation that the trip was purely for
pleasure because we spent only two days (visiting tourist
attractions)," Commission A chairman Binsar Tambunan said, with
emotion.

Binsar then hit back, saying that a planned foreign trip due
to be made by some City Hall journalists would also be financed
by the city budget.

He also complained that his wife and children had been mocked
by neighbors because of newspaper reports on the controversial
foreign trip.

It was reported that besides visiting the crisis center and
the fire headquarters, the councillors spent most of their time
at tourist attractions.

The 2001 city budget has allocated Rp 12 billion for
councillors' domestic and foreign trips. More than half of the
funds have been depleted.

A councillor is scheduled to take at least two foreign trips
per year.

Two Indonesian consulates in Madrid and Los Angeles recently
sent letters to the City Council, saying that the councillors'
trips, respectively to study garbage management and entertainment
tax, had not been effective.(jun)