Rp 412m allotted for one classroom

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Although the general public may be well aware of the poor condition of Jakarta's schools, they may not know a lot of money is being poured into renovating them.

In this year alone, the city has allocated Rp 21 billion to build 51 classrooms for junior high schools and vocational high schools in 15 locations throughout the city. That means each classroom, measuring 8 meters by 9 meters, will cost some Rp 412 million.

"That total does not include the cost of furnishing the classroom," said the head of education facilities and infrastructure division at the City Education Department, Nawawi, at a news conference held here on Wednesday.

The head of the City Education Department, Gito Purnomo, backed Nawawi's statement, saying that the figure was based on calculations submitted by a consultant from the City Building Control Department.

"We know nothing about the projects' estimate as it was made by a consultant from the city department for building supervision," said Gito at the news conference.

The conference was organized to explain the city administration's plan to renovate old schools and to build new facilities in response to public criticism over the schools' poor condition.

The city administration allocated Rp 94 billion this year to build new classrooms and to renovate a number of classrooms at senior high schools, which have been seriously neglected.

Earlier on Wednesday, the City Council's Commission E for social welfare said that they had discovered several instances of markups in renovation projects for many schools across the city.

According to the head of Commission E, Nazamuddin, signs of markups were found by a number of city councillors who were deployed at over 100 elementary and junior high schools to check the condition of those schools recently.

These signs included the use of building materials of which the quality was below what was specified, while in other schools the contractors only renovated a part of the building.

"We often noticed that only the front of the schools looked good, but the rear of the buildings were not renovated," he said, adding that funding included the renovation of both the back and the front of the building.

Meanwhile, Gito said that 68 elementary schools out of the 1,699 in the city would have a complete overhaul as the buildings were in very poor shape.

About 30 of the 285 junior high schools in the city would also require a complete renovation, he added.

However, he said that the city administration only planned to renovate 10 elementary schools and six junior high schools this year.

Therefore, Gito has requested additional funding from the 2003 city budget so that his department can renovate more schools.

Commission E has agreed to the demand for additional funding, while underlining that the project's implementation should be tightly controlled to avoid corruption.

Ahmad Heriyawan, a councillor from the Justice Party, said that the city administration should find a way to renovate the schools as they could collapse at any time, putting the lives of students and teachers at risk.