Jakarta Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat told the media that he is holding off on approving Revisions to the 2017 Regional Budget (APBD-P) because he believes that the members of the Jakarta City Council (DPRD) is making outrageous requests for their personal allowances.
One of the allowance requests that he mentioned was that DPRD members asked for up to IDR3 million (US$220) for every meeting that they attend in their capacity as city councillors.
“There’s the meeting fee, for which the chairman gets IDR3 million for each meeting, and in one day there could be up to three meetings. I did not want to (approve the request)!” Djarot told reporters today, as quoted by Kompas.
Djarot did not say what possible reason the DPRD members could use to justify receiving extra money for attending meetings (which is supposed to be, y’know, a fundamental part of their jobs). But he did say that, if the APBD-P were approved as is, the vice chairman of the DPRD would get IDR2 million per meeting while a regular member would get IDR500,000.
The approval of the APBD-P was scheduled for last Friday, which was the last working day of the third quarter of the financial year. Djarot said he risked going over the deadline because of the DPRD’s outrageous requests, which he said could violate existing financial regulations pertaining to the budget.
“I don’t want us (the Jakarta administration and the DPRD) to hold each other hostage at the end (of my term), just play it straight and in accordance with the rules,” he said, before adding that he hopes the APBD-P to be finalized this week.
Djarot, who was previously vice governor and replaced Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama after the latter was convicted of blasphemy earlier this year, is governor of Jakarta until October 15. The APBD-P would be one of his last major acts of governance in Jakarta before Governor-elect Anies Baswedan and Vice Governor-elect Sandiaga Uno take over (though the exact date of their inauguration has not been determined).
The Jakarta DPRD is notorious for making outrageous allowance requests upon the taxpayers’ money. In 2016, they asked for expensive Apple laptops that they would use to “look up laws”, while a few months ago they demanded that the Jakarta administration pay their personal assistants’ salaries. Their requests were duly shut down on both occasions.
