Remember those 649 civil servants that Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama appointed to new positions earlier this morning? Well, as one final measure to make sure he had the right people for the jobs, the governor forced all 649 to immediately take a surprise drug test.
While this may have come as a shock to some of the civil servants, it really shouldn’t have. Although Ahok did not announce these drug tests beforehand, he did do exactly the same thing the last time he did a mass reappointment of civil servants at the beginning of this year.
The head of Prevention and Community Empowerment at the Jakarta brand National Narcotics Agency (BNN), Sapari, told the civil servants at this morning’s ceremony not to leave immediately after the new appointments had been announced.
“We asked that the ladies and gentlemen do not immediately leave the show, as we must first do urine testing on all of you,” Sapari said this morning as quoted by Vivanews.
Sapari said Jakarta is one of the provinces of Indonesia with the highest rate of drug use. To that end, the city administration requested BNN Jakarta to carry out urine tests to ensure that none of its officials were misusing illicit narcotics.
The last time Ahok did mass drug testing of civil servants, just 13 of the 4676 tested positive. Those 13 tested positive for morphine use, which they said was due to unrelated medication they had recently taken.
The head of the Regional Personnel Agency (BKD) for Jakarta, Agus Suradika, said any officials that were found to have used illegal drugs would be immediately removed from their positions.
“We have no tolerance for drug users in the city government bodies,” said Agus.
