Over the past few days, we’ve been hearing of the Jakarta City Council’s (DPRD) outrageous budget requests for things they arguably don’t need.
(Read: Seriously? City Council wants to prove Ahok wasted taxpayer’s money in Rotterdam by going there using taxpayer’s money and Jakarta City Council requests budget for 12 “working trips” to Bali next year)
And now they’re coming under new criticism for requesting Rp 1.6 billion to purchase laptops for every single councilor.
But Prabowo Soenirman, a councilor from the Gerindra party, justified the budget request.
“It’s justifiable, kok. [The laptops are] for 101 council members. It amounts to less than Rp 10 million for each laptop. The laptops are going to be used to take down notes in meetings and for presentations,” Prabowo said, as quoted by Warta Kota yesterday.
See anything wrong here? Well, if you passed math in primary school then you’d know that 1.6 billion divided by 101 is actually 15.8 million, not less than 10 million. Do our local legislators have no real concept of money?
Secondly, spending around Rp 15 million on a laptop just to take down notes and create presentations is overkill. These laptops under Rp 5 million can perform those tasks admirably.
The DPRD needs to learn how much things cost in the real world. If they needed a carton of milk, they’d probably submit a budget request for Rp 500,000.
