State firms asked to sell stickers

JAKARTA (JP): State-owned corporations appointed to sell stickers to help fund the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in October should be careful to protect the public, the director of the Indonesian Consumer Organization (YLKI) said Saturday.

YLKI's director, Zoemrotin K.S, said that state-owned firms, including PT Telkom, electricity firm PLN and water supplier PAM, must have a clear period in which they sell the stickers which cost Rp 1,000 each.

"For instance, there are five million telephone users in Indonesia so there will be Rp 5 billion in a month collected by Telkom. The other firms will have more. So, there's a great possibility there will be extra funds," she said Saturday.

Last month the government announced that the sticker selling program would be extended for four months, starting July.

The original sticker selling program started in March and ended mid-June.

YLKI has been flooded with complaints about the Rp 1,000 stickers because people were forced to pay for them when they paid there electricity, telephone and water bills, making it impossible for people to refuse to buy the stickers.

Several cinemas, restaurants, hotels and toll roads also charged people for the stickers.

Consumers did not seem to have the right not to pay for the stickers, Zoemrotin said.

PT Angkasa Rona Graha, a private firm controlled by one of President Soeharto's sons, Bambang Trihatmodjo, had been authorized to sell the stickers to raise Rp 40 billion ($16 million) to help stage the Rp 105 billion SEA Games.

But over three months the company raised only Rp 3.7 billion - not enough to finance the building and refurbishment of sports facilities.

PT Angkasa Rona Graha was then stripped of its authority to sell the stickers and only the state-owned firms are now allowed to raise money from sticker sales. (icn)