Uniform stitch-up for officials
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.