Regions urged to help finance police
Regions urged to help finance police
Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Amid the regional autonomy era, regions should set aside a small
portion of their annual budget to help curb corruption in the
police force and at the same time make them more professional,
police observers have said.
Igor Manindjo, an economics researcher of the University of
Indonesia, said in a seminar here on Friday that despite law
enforcement, corruption in the police force and among police
personnel in the work place would continue unless the police had
financial sources other than the annual budget.
"Despite their national leadership, the police have been
subordinated to provinces, regencies and municipalities under the
regional autonomy law in carrying out their mission to maintain
security and order. It is only reasonable that the regions
allocate a small portion of their budget to help support the
police," he said.
He said corruption was rampant in the police institution since
police aspirants pay a very high fee to join the National Police
and to develop their career. Such a corrupt recruitment system
has forced police school graduates to resort to extortion or to
take bribes to recoup their losses.
Igor argued that the rife and systemic corruption in the
police force was related to the police's small budget.
He cited that in the 2004 state budget, the government has
allocated only Rp 9 trillion for the police and their civilian
staff the total number of which reaches around 700,000
nationwide.
"Of the (police) budget, 90 percent is allocated for
nonoperational expenditure, including salaries, and only 10
percent is allocated for operational expenditure," he said,
adding that police stations in the regions had to seek additional
sources to help cover their high operational costs.
Police are supposed to be on duty 24-hours a day but the
lowest-ranking personnel are paid around Rp 900,000 (US$108)
gross per month while middle-ranking officers or academy
graduates are paid around Rp 1,500,000 monthly.
Many police in the regions are unable to carry out their duty
of handling security disturbances and law enforcement because of
financial constraints.
Igor, who has conducted several studies on police operations,
said that many police stations had financial problems because the
operational budget was disbursed once in three months.
The National Police has 30 provincial headquarters and 830
precincts in regencies and municipalities and thousands of police
stations in subdistricts.
Rashid Lubis, director of Indonesian Police Watch, shared
Igor's view and said that regions depended on the police to
maintain security and order and to enforce the law.
He said like developed countries, Indonesia should pay the
police well since security at home was in their hands.
He said, however, better pay would not automatically curb
corruption among the police, but there would be no excuse for
poor performance.