Publisher gets permit at last
JAKARTA (JP): Thirteen years ago, Idrus Indas applied to the Ministry of Information to turn his Nusantara Pos weekly in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, into a daily newspaper.
On Thursday, the license for a daily newspaper unexpectedly arrived in his office in Kendari.
Idrus told Antara he had long given up on the idea after stumbling into a tangle of bureaucratic red tape.
The permit for Nusantara Pos is one of several that Minister of Information Muhammad Yunus has signed since he broke down the bureaucratic barriers in his office which he perceived as obstructing the free flow of information.
Yunus has also simplified the conditions to obtain press publishing licenses and is now looking into the possibility of eliminating the 50,000-strong Ministry of Information.
He is arguing that the ministry is a heavy drain on scarce government resources, doing work that mostly obstructed the free flow of information.
Idrus' case could not illustrate his point better.
Idrus said Nusantara Pos, which he founded in 1971, submitted an application form to become a daily newspaper in 1985 after securing fresh capital from local investors.
In 1990, he came to Jakarta to raise the issue directly with then minister of information Harmoko, who issued a letter of recommendation to the director general for press and graphics Subrata, ordering him to look into the matter and make sure that all the conditions were fulfilled.
He said he met all the requirements but nothing happened.
Then he heard that to secure his license he had to fork out a fortune in bribes. "But because they were asking for a lot of money and I could not afford it, I came home and buried all hopes of obtaining the press license," he said.
Nusantara Pos has continued to appear as a weekly tabloid, printing 2,000 copies each edition.
Idrus said he is now hoping to find investors willing to finance its conversion into a daily newspaper.
He was optimistic about his prospects, noting that Southeast Sulawesi is currently only served by one newspaper, Media Kita of the Jawa Pos publishing group. (emb)