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.