Anita Rachman, Jakarta – The House of Representatives is continuing to ignore the tide of public opinion firmly against taxpayer-funded overseas trips for legislators, confirming on Monday that yet another batch of legislators and family members were heading overseas.
Democratic Party lawmaker I Wayan Gunastra, a member of House Commission XI for finance, said members of the commission had been divided in two groups and would depart on Saturday for comparative trips to either England and Germany or South Korea and Japan.
The aim of the trip, he said, was to study the Financial Services Supervisory Authority (OJK), which is expected to strip Bank Indonesia of many of its powers to monitor non-banking financial institutions.
"I understand there have been criticisms of the overseas study trips undertaken by the legislators, but OJK is very important and we need to look directly at the countries that failed to apply it and those that were successful," he said.
He said that England was one of the country's that had failed to implement an OJK policy and "we would like to know why." He refused to say how much the trip involving around 30 legislators was costing but the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (Fitra) put the cost at Rp 1.25 billion ($140,000).
Golkar legislator Nusron Wahid, another member of the expected delegation, put the figure at closer to Rp 1.7 billion as a number of family members were expected to join the tour party.
He confirmed the South Korea and Japan trip would depart on Saturday, but that the trip to London and Germany would be delayed because of visa issues.
The Forum of Citizens Concerned about the Indonesian Legislature (Formappi) says that between October 2009 and September 2010, lawmakers conducted at least 19 overseas trip to 14 different countries without any clear objectives.
Despite undertaking about 140 trips abroad since 2004, legislators have produced only three basic reports that contained information readily available on the Internet.
On Saturday, eight legislators on the House Ethics Council deported for Greece to study ethics, which, according to one critic, showed the lawmakers did not have any.