Team lambasted for working slow

JAKARTA (JP): Councilors have lambasted the city administration reform team and the local inspectorate officials for working too slowly in probing the case of the city official vehicle maintenance losses of about Rp 16 billion.

Ali Imran Husein from the United Development Party faction and Hotma Tambunan from the Armed Forces faction on Friday questioned the belated actions of the team and the inspectorate officials over the case of huge financial losses.

"If they don't want to be suspected of committing collusion, corruption or nepotism (KKN) practices, they should soon disclose the matter to the public," Hotma said.

Echoing the sentiment, Ali added that "there is an impression that they want to cover up the case."

According to Ali, the administration should have finished investigating the case and announced the results to the public before the end of this month.

"Otherwise, we'd consider the administration has failed to perform their duty. Then, we'll let prosecutors and police handle the case".

When asked about the progress of the budget losses investigation, Deputy Governor for Administrative Affairs Abdul Kahfi, who is also head of the reform team, told reporters on Wednesday that the administration was still in the process of carrying it out.

"We haven't finished the investigation," Kahfi argued.

Previously, he had promised that the administration would announce the findings this week.

More than Rp 16 billion was missing from the 1998/1999 city budget due to the practice of marking up the number of vehicles.

Based on the vehicle ownership documents the number of official vehicles included in the routine expenditure was 3,873, far below the figure of 6,797 that was reported in the budget calculation.

On Thursday, city secretary Fauzi Bowo revealed that the number stated in the budget calculation -- based on the new findings -- was counted at some 8,500 vehicles.

According to Fauzi, the new findings disclosed that there had been a lot of discrepancies in the use of the money allocated for the maintenance of the official city cars, meaning that the administration needs more time to complete the investigation at least until the end of this month.

"Many entries have not been made, for instance, that of a foreign aid project for the city sanitary agency to purchase vehicles," Fauzi told reporters. (ind/ylt)