TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said that typing mistakes on the regional budget draft always occurred every year. This, he added, was because the provincial administration’s e-budgeting system was carried out manually.

“Such a problem like this emerges every year, so which must be corrected is the system,” said Anies at City Hall, Central Jakarta, Wednesday, October 30.

Anies reiterated that the typo was made since the data input until the data verification was done manually, while there were thousands of activities and their derivative components on the budget that must be registered and verified.

Thus, the governor opined the potential for error in inputting data up to verifying a huge amount of data was considerably high.

“[If we are] relying on manuals to correct such huge data as this, the potential for [wrong data] to be overlooked is high,” Anies remarked.

According to him, a more advanced system was necessary to help input and verify budget data, so that the system would reject data that was not in accordance with the automatic calculation.

Previously, Jakarta Legislative Council (DPRD) member from PSI faction, William Aditya Sarana, exposed his findings on many irregularities in the 2020 regional budget draft (APBD). He highlighted the unreasonably high budget for Aibon glue, pens, up to computer, server, and smart data storage.

Anies Baswedan admitted there were oddities on 2020 Jakarta APBD Draft and claimed to have conducted internal evaluation following the findings.

TAUFIQ SIDDIQ