TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Siti Juliantari from the Monitoring and Public Service Division of the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) said the implementation of the capital’s Smart Jakarta Card (KJP) education allowance program was intransparent and therefore prone to abuses.
“The website (KJP) only lists the recipients’ names without their addresses,” she said. Consequently, she added, visits to would-be recipients’ schools were required to validate the recipients' data.
The ICW also said it had discovered a number of bogus addresses. “Even the schools did not know their students’ addresses,” she told Tempo on Thursday, June 26, 2014.
Siti also said the ICW found out some of the KJP recipients could not be categorized as deprived. “The criterion is that the recipients have to be underprivileged, but the evidence we found in the field proved otherwise. This might lead to the excessive spending of the budget,” she said.
Siti said another issue besetting the program was the accountability of KJP recipients. She explained many recipients had failed to attach the receipts of goods they purchased using the KJP cards, causing schools to cut corners and produce their own receipts.
Siti said the ICW also detected fake KJP recipients. “The names are on the list, but it turns out the recipients are fictitious,” she said. Therefore, Siti called on the Jakarta administration to be transparent in implementing the program and meticulously screen would-be KJP recipients.
The Jakarta Education Agency has earmarked around Rp1.4 trillion for the KJP program this year. Some 611,000 students from elementary to high schools have been listed as KJP recipients for the 2014/2015 academic year.
ERWAN HERMAWAN
