Oyos Saroso H.N. and Agus Maryono, Bandarlampung/Purbalingga – A new disbursement procedure is raising concerns that it may aggravate corruption surrounding the School Operational Assistance (BOS) fund.
The new procedure will see funds siphoned to local administrations, instead of being channeled directly from the National Education Ministry to schools.
Anti-Corruption Committee (Koak) coordinator, Ahmad Yulden Erwin, said that the new payout system may lead to corrupt practices. He said the BOS payout in Lampung was already mired-down with late disbursements because the proposed budgets were also late.
"It is invariably the late disbursement of the BOS funds that has been the excuse for school headmasters to take levies from students' parents, despite the fact that such practices are not allowed," Erwin told a workshop in Bandar Lampung, on Friday.
Erwin said that even with the old system, in which BOS funds were directly transferred from the National Education Ministry to schools, the funds were only disbursed in February at the earliest, in Lampung.
With the new system, the fund will be transferred to regency/municipality administrations before it is further transferred by the administrations to the schools in their respective regions.
"The new system requires the BOS fund be allotted to regency/city budgets. The regents/mayors will then transfer it to the recipient schools only after the budget is approved by the regency/city legislative councils," Erwin said.
The recipient schools, in turn, will be able to distribute the funds only after submitting their school budget activity plans (RKAS) to their respective regents/mayors.
The BOS fund has been distributed to state-run and privately-run elementary and junior high schools nationwide since 2005. An elementary school student is eligible for Rp 400,000 of BOS annually while that of a junior high school student is Rp 575,000.
Nationally, the total allocation for the BOS fund in the 2011 state budget is Rp 16,265 trillion. It is to be distributed to over 27 million students at some 146,000 elementary schools, and around 9.5 million students at 34,000 junior high schools. The fund is transferred once every four months.
Separately in Purbalingga, Central Java, over 1,000 elementary school graduates are reportedly unable to continue their studies at junior high schools because of their inability to pay the admission fees.
"I feel really sorry for my child because he really wants to go to school. But there is nothing that I can do. We are poor," said Taryono, 47, of Padamara, Purbalingga.
He said he was forced to have his son help him work as a scavenger when he graduated from elementary school as he did not have the money to enroll him in junior high school.
"I was told that it requires millions of rupiah to enter a child into school. I just don't have the money. We even find it difficult to afford our daily meals," Taryono said.
Data at the Purbalingga Education Agency showed that 1,031 elementary school graduates did not continue their studies due to the lack of money.
This accounts for 6.6 percent of the total 15,549 elementary school graduates this year.
"This is unreasonable. The central government cannot let this happen. This is the impact of the expenses at state-run schools: that economically poor families feel unable to send their children to school," Prayitno, a staff member at the regency administration's public relation division told The Jakarta Post, on Thursday.