School committees may be helping to steal fund

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) has found that school committees, expected to help create a better atmosphere for education in Indonesia, might be abetting irresponsible and greedy principals in stealing education funds.

The discovery came from investigations into five schools: SMP 70 and SMP 250 state junior high schools and SD 03 state elementary school in Jakarta and SMU 5 and SMU 1 state high schools in Cimahi, West Java.

"There have been many irregularities in implementing the policy such as selection of school committee members and drawing up of the school budget (APBS)," said Ade Irawan, ICW program manager in its public service monitoring division.

School committees, based on Ministerial Decree No. 044/U/2002, are part of a school-based management program adopted from overseas. It is meant to boost the involvement of the public in school management and to supervise the use of school money.

Ade said that all committee members had been selected by the principals themselves, so other academics at schools never really knew about the capability or accountability of the members.

"They never involve teachers in budget planning," said Ade.

Some of the APBS money is derived from the government, foreign foundations such as the Asian Development Bank and UNICEF, and from parents.

ICW found out that fund usage was hard to control because the education agencies had disbursed funds directly to principals, instead of the school treasury. The committees failed to monitor properly the flow of funds.

The investigation revealed that principals have unduly influenced school policies, including financial ones.

"There is no control over fund usage," Ade said.

ICW said that the establishment of a school committee was not a bad idea. "It is a matter of implementation; the government must provide information to the public about what school committees are and their role in the education process," he said.

ICW managed to assist Soebandrio, head of the school committee of SMP 250 Jakarta, to file a report on alleged corruption by the principal with the City Audit Agency (Bawasda).

The principal of SMP 250 could not explain the use of a total of Rp 1.2 billion (US$141,176) from the school budget for the 2002/2003 fiscal year, of which Rp 780 million was derived from the administration while the rest came from parental contributions.

ICW said that Bawasda should take firm legal action against any such alleged corruption. -- JP