Jakarta’s got 99 problems, and our Jakarta City Council (DPRD) members not being able to memorize laws is one of them.
And they say that only pricey Apple laptops can fix the problem.
According to Detik, the DPRD recently put forward a budget proposal of Rp 1.6 billion to buy each and every single one of their 106 members an Apple laptop that costs at least Rp 10 million.
DPRD’s Commission D Secretary Panji Virgianto justified the proposal by saying that council members need new laptops in order to look up laws when needed.
“If we have laptops, [we’d know the answer to the question] what law is that? Which section?” he said, as quoted by Detik yesterday.
Panji added that currently councilors have to photocopy law documents every time they need to reference something, which has resulted in the accumulation of stacks of photocopied documents lying around in the DPRD office. He believes that an upgrade to laptops would be cheaper in the long run.
Fair enough, but do they really need pricey Apple laptops to do such a basic task of looking up documents? Surely a Rp 3 million laptop could do the job just as well. What’s next? Are they going to request Rolex watches because they can’t tell the time?
