Salary only small part of city officials' incomes

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

On any given day, the parking lot for level II officials at City Hall is filled with expensive cars and drivers waiting to whisk their bosses home.

Level II officials consist of heads of agencies and bureaus, as well as assistants to the city secretary.

From their cars and drivers, it would be natural to assume that these officials pull down pretty hefty monthly salaries.

You would be wrong. According to one level II official, speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials make about Rp 3.5 million to Rp 4.5 million a month, depending on their position and length of employment.

A member of the City Council's budget commission, Nurmansyah Lubis, said on Wednesday officials in the city administration could take home three to four times their officials monthly salaries.

"And this income is legal because it is allocated in the city budget," he told The Jakarta Post.

A close look at the 2005 draft budget shows that each agency in the administration is allocating between 10 percent and 30 percent of their respective budgets for officials' "additional welfare".

According to Nurmansyah, these allocations are used to pay officials honorariums for carrying out their routine duties.

The City Audit Agency, he says, allocates funds to pay honorariums to officials involved in auditing activities. The City Assets Bureau allocates money to pay officials involved in inventorying the city's assets.

"Ideally, those officials would not receive these honorariums because they are only doing their jobs," Nurmansyah said.

However, he said the council could not scrap these allocations in the 2005 draft budget because they had become so entrenched in the system.

"We also did not have to discuss each item stipulated in the draft because of time constraints," he said, adding that the council might begin scrapping such allocations in the 2006 city budget.

The council is set to approve the Rp 14 trillion 2005 budget on Jan. 6. Last year's budget was Rp 12.6 trillion.

The level II official who requested anonymity, and who is heavily involved in budget deliberations, confirmed such allocations, but stressed that they were needed as long as the city did not have proper payment mechanisms.

"If we scrapped such allocations, many officials in the city administration would resign and go to private companies because they could not live on our monthly salaries alone," he said.

"How can a level II official survive in Jakarta on a Rp 4 million monthly salary," he told the Post at his office.

Nurmansyah, however, said the city should scrap these allocations in the future because they were sources of corruption.

He said the council's budgetary committee would discuss with relevant officials how to eliminate these allocations and how to establish proper payment mechanisms for civil servants in the administration.

"We realize that before we scrap such allocations, we must be able to establish a good payment system. Significant salary increases are needed for officials who must carry out extra duties," he said.