Oyos Saroso H. N., Bandarlampung – Hundreds of billions of dollars from a fund for local education has been "embezzled" by school principals and committees due to a lack of supervision.
Forged financial reports, reduced funding for school activities and not spending funds from the central government in accordance with their allocation were the means used to embezzle the money.
An activist from the Lampung branch of the Indonesian Teachers' Dignity Forum, Rifian Al Chepy, said the misappropriation of education funds no longer occurred at the education office, but was ongoing in schools.
Many school principals own receipts or proof of purchase documents and false rubber stamps that enable them to provide legitimate paperwork to cover illegal activities.
The decentralized funds are part of the National Education Ministry's assistance to governors to finance educational programs that are under the jurisdiction of the central government in the provinces.
The funds are specifically aimed at supporting the nine-year mandatory education program.
"The public cannot oversee fund usage due to a lack of transparency. Even legislative councilors have no access to data on the amount of local education funds and what they are used for, let alone members of the public," said Chepy on Friday.
According to Chepy, members of the public have raised concern that many elementary school principals in Lampung have misappropriated school operational funds (BOS), but none of these cases have been legally processed.
The BOS are just a small part of the educational funding provided by the central government to provincial heads across the country.
Besides BOS, other education funds provided to provinces include welfare and qualification improvement funds for teachers, school building renovation and reconstruction funds, scholarship programs for needy students, textbook funds, national examination funds and other funds for education-related infrastructure and facilities.
"Nationally, the allocation of local education funds for the 2006-2008 period amounted to Rp 58.73 trillion (US$5.8 billion), which is broken down into Rp 17.88 trillion in 2006, Rp 18.77 trillion in 2007 and Rp 22.11 trillion in 2008.
"Lampung receives Rp 1.3 trillion in decentralized education funds annually," said Chepy.
Anti Corruption Committee coordinator Ahmad Yulden Erwin said that besides being prone to misappropriation, the decentralized education funds were also often used as a means to shun responsibilities, especially when corruption was involved.
"The education minister says the decentralized education funds are the responsibility of the governor, while the governor says the management of the funds is under the authority of the central government," said Erwin.
"In 2007, four provinces received more than Rp 1 trillion in the local education funds - West Java [Rp 3.15 trillion], Central Java [2.65 trillion], East Java [2.06 trillion] and North Sumatra [Rp 1.07 trillion]," said Erwin.
The government will again provide Rp 1.147 trillion in education funds to Lampung this year, a considerable amount compared to its total provincial budget of Rp 1.8 trillion.
Lampung Police are currently investigating a BOS case at the SDN 2 Sukabanjar state elementary school in West Lampung and are investigating its principal Edy Gunawan who is strongly believed to have submitted false data on the number of students receiving BOS funds.
Three Lampung Education Office heads have so far been convicted of embezzling education funds.