One of the little luxuries of living in Jakarta is that it is very easy to get your laundry done for very cheap, priced by the kilogram. However, if you have an expensive, multi-million rupiah suit or dress, you would probably be willing to spend a bit more to send it a dry cleaner experienced with handling such delicate garments.
But you would not be Mualimin Abdi, Indonesia’s director general of human rights at the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. Back in June, he had one of his suits, worth Rp 10 million, sent to a place called Fresh Laundry on Jalan Pedurenan in South Jakarta, a home-based business that charges just Rp 6,000 per kilogram of laundry.
Fresh Laundry is located just minutes away from the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, so in terms of convenience it makes sense that Mualimin might have had send his expensive suit there. But what happened next is not too surprising – his suit was returned the next day but in a shrunken and wrinkled state that was unacceptable to Mualimin.
What was surprising is that the human rights director demanded the proprietor of Fresh Laundry, Budi Imam, to pay him Rp 10 million for ruining his suit. According to Budi’s description of the events on Facebook, he offered to pay Mualimin Rp 350,000 in compensation, many times the cost of his cleaning services. But Mualimin refused the offer and instead sued the laundry owner for Rp 210 million – Rp 10 million for the cost of the suit plus Rp 200 million in intangible damages – in the South Jakarta District Court.
The lawsuit was finally headed to court last week when Mualimin suddenly asked his staff to drop it.
“I was just giving a lesson to Pak Budi. He already said sorry and we’ve made up,” Mualimin told Kompas last Thursday.
It should be noted that Budi posted about his legal troubles on social media just two days before that, where his post quickly went viral, with many people condemning the lawsuit as a vicious miscarriage of justice. But we’re sure that had nothing to do with Mualimin’s sudden change of heart.
