Researchers call for simpler permit procedures

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Researchers rebuffed the government's insistence on retaining the bureaucratic procedures for research permits in this era of reform.

They said the procedures, which sometimes needed up to a year, were a waste of time and did not bode well with Indonesia's ambition to become a technology powerhouse.

Muhadjir Darwin, researcher at the Center of Demographic Studies of Gadjah Mada University and Mochammad Maksum, Director of Gadjah Mada University's Center for Rural and Regional Development Studies called on the government to dump the regulations.

Darwin and Maksum pointed out that the regulations were no longer suitable for present-day Indonesia because they were made by the authoritarian New Order government.

"The complicated bureaucratic procedures needed to conduct research should be dropped," said Darwin.

"In fact, we don't need such official permits at all to conduct any scientific research in the country. Conducting research is a public right. No one, including the government, has the right to place any restrictions on it."

The government's policy on research permit came under public scrutiny following the arrest of six German students conducting a demographic research in a slum area in Central Jakarta last week on the grounds they had no permit.

The complicated procedures apply to both local and foreign researchers.

Darwin said the process did not cost that much money but it involved complicated procedures that involved numerous institutions. "It is exhausting and a waste of time."

As Darwin has experienced, it needs at least two weeks to obtain a single letter of permit to conduct a research at a single site in a single province. If more sites and provinces were involved, the time needed to obtain the letter will be longer.

For a single research at a single site, the researcher will sometimes have to deal with no less than five institutions to obtain the permit: the local village chief, sub-district administration, police, military command and local planning board.

The policy, legacy of the New Order regime, was initially aimed at making sure that the research would not end up in challenging state ideology or undermining state policy.

"So it is no longer needed now," Darwin said.

In reality, he said, the bureaucratic procedures were a mere formality because the permit can be bought. Government bureaucrats often do not read the research proposal. They just stamp the proposal mechanically in return for money.

But clever researchers can easily fool the bureaucrat by not specifying the subject matter they will study whenever it deals with a "sensitive" issue.

"Now, what the government should do is to encourage scientists to do more research, which it can use as input in policy making," Darwin said.

Mochammad Maksum also had lots of stories to tell about procurement of research permits.

The role of the military was obvious when Maksum conducted a research on a plantation in South Sumatra in 1992.

His team had all the necessary permits but officers from the now defunct coordinating agency for national stability and security (Bakortanas) in Jakarta ordered local authorities to evict them from the research site.

He also had another story of a bureaucratic hurdle for researchers, especially foreign researchers. He told about a British scientist who conducted research last year after being frustrated that his application for a permit had received no response after months of waiting.

The British gentleman managed to get the permit days before his three-month research was completed. Want to know how he did his research? "He stayed in Kuala Lumpur and came occasionally to Indonesia on a tourist visa," Maksum said.

"I don't know where exactly the difficulty in the process of issuing a research permit lies, but I feel it has something to do with security considerations. I don't think the complicated bureaucracy for foreign researchers has a strong relation with hidden motives such as money," Maksum said.

Helene van Klinken, resident director of the Australian Consortium for in-Country Indonesian Studies (ACICIS), also did not see the point of reestablishing restrictions for foreign researchers as the New Order administration did.

"I still think that the restriction for conducting research was only imposed by the New Order regime," she said, adding that she did not encounter any problems with permits during her 18- month stay in Indonesia.

Nevertheless, she suggested that Indonesia open its doors to foreign researchers to improve the world's understanding of the country.

In Australia, she said there were some Japanese researchers who came to conduct research on an Aboriginal tribe. Some of the Japanese even had better knowledge about the Aborigines than Australians had.

Maksum concurred and said that in this era of globalization, Indonesia should be more open to foreign researchers conducting research in Indonesia.

This way, Indonesia would derive benefits from the research conducted by foreigners. (23/swa)