Sea port firm has problems eliminating culture of graft

JAKARTA (JP): PT Pelabuhan Indonesia II, the state-owned that manages Tanjung Priok sea port, yesterday admitted to the House of Representatives (DPR) that it is having problems eliminating illegal charges at the port.

The company's president, A. Harbani, said in a hearing with Commission V of the House (DPR) that there are several critical points where illegal levies occur everyday.

"There are six critical points at the export section and seven points at the import section of the port where service users and providers physically meet." Harbani said.

Harbani said these points of contact were discovered after the management investigated reported complaints at the beginning of this year.

The company's president said the illegal levies start when the service users park their cars at the parking area. Here, they are charged Rp 1,000 (46 U.S. cents), he added.

Harbani said the next illegal levy occurs when service users deliver their documents to the counter where they have to pay Rp 3,000 ($1.39) per document. And when they pay the bills, the service users have to pay an additional Rp 2,000 (93 U.S. cents) per container, he added.

Harbani said the service users then have to pay Rp 1,000 for every container entering the parking area of trailers and another Rp 1,000 when containers are delivered to them.

He said the other illegal levies occur at the entrance and exit gates where they have to pay another Rp 2,000 each.

Total

He said the total amount of illegal levies, however, does not reach Rp 260 million (US$120,537.78) per day as recently suggested by Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto.

Harbani said management has taken several actions against the illegal levies.

He said the illegal parking charges have been stopped by issuing free-of-charge parking cards at the parking area and punishing employees who took money at counters.

Harbani said the management will gradually take action to eliminate illegal levies by simplifying procedures and using computer technology in the documentation of services, so that the frequency of contacts between the service users and providers can be reduced.

"But it is still difficult to remove all the illegal levies because many service users do not cooperate with us by giving money to our officers although the officers have rejected it," Harbani said.

He said another problem is the lack of coordination among several institutions involved in the processing of documents, which encourage illegal levies.

When asked about the transportation minister's statement on the daily amount of illegal levies, Harbani said that the minister's estimate was probably calculated by multiplying the total number of containers in the port, which is about 10,000.

There are only about 2,500 containers coming into the port and going out of it per day, Harbani said.

"If we multiply the 2,500 moving containers by Rp 26,000, we get a figure of only Rp 65 million ($30,134)," he said. "But if we multiply the 2,500 containers with an illegal levy of Rp 10,000 from each of them, we will get a figure of only Rp 25 million." (02)