Uniform stitch-up for officials
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Disappointment flooded the face of one of the city's civil servants recently, when he opened a parcel containing his new uniform -- caps, belts, and three sets of trousers and shirts.
"The trousers are not my size. The color of the shirts is darker than the trouser color. The set should be of the same khaki-brown color," Wawan, not his real name, sighed.
Wawan is one of the civil servants who returned their uniforms -- 2,200 caps and 300 trouser and shirt sets in all -- to the City Assets Office for alteration.
Others, who did not return their uniforms still found reason to complain.
"I have bought the same material and paid a tailor to make a new one as I was not patient enough to wait for the altered uniform," Agus, another civil servant, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
"I think the previous policy was better, when the administration handed out material and gave each of us Rp 50,000 (US$5.62) in cash to make a uniform," he said.
In a procurement project worth Rp 22 billion, the administration purchased uniform material worth Rp 12.6 billion for 30,000 male and female officers.
It gave 13,500 female officers Rp 150,000 each to make three sets of uniform, costing Rp 2 billion in all.
No information has been made available on the use of the remaining Rp 7.4 billion in the project.
Recently Transparency International Indonesia (TII) ranked Jakarta as the nation's most corrupt city.
City spokesman Catur Laswanto acknowledged the complaints, saying the administration was discussing whether or not it would continue with the policy, which was implemented this year.
"We are evaluating what has gone wrong," Catur told the Post over the weekend.
He referred to the policy stipulated in Gubernatorial Decree 114/2004 issued on July 6 last year regulating the procurement of the official uniform.
The policy revises the initial policy to distribute only the material to the civil servants and allow them to look for their own tailors.
"The policy is actually meant to ensure uniformity and avoid different styles as occurred with the previous policy," Catur said.
Head of the City Assets Agency's procurement division Latief Lubis, said that uniforms could be returned to the agency up until the end of the month.
"The company responsible for the procurement project, PT Sritex in Central Java, has agreed to replace the uniforms with new ones," Lubis said.
"We don't know how the mistakes could have occurred as we submitted 30 samples of different sizes," he said.