Camelia Pasandaran & Vento Saudale – Corruption and favoritism in the use of education funds is to blame for a spate of injuries due to school building collapses, Indonesia Corruption Watch says.

A fatality at a school on Monday has put the spotlight back on the poor state of the nation's classrooms, 150,000 of which are damaged to some extent. Febri Hendri, a researcher with ICW, said the problem was more than just a reflection of the nation's modest education budget.

"We found several cases in which the budget to repair classrooms was reduced through embezzlement, both at the school level and the local government level," Febri told the Jakarta Globe on Tuesday. "Moreover, not all schools have the luxury to access the repairs budget as it depends on their ability to successfully lobby the government."

The latest incident happened at the Al-Ikhlas religious school in Banten's Cidikit village. The collapse claimed the life of fourth grader Sukniah. The 10-year-old died after part of the school, built two years earlier, fell on her and 46 other students while they were studying on Monday. Ten other children were seriously injured in the collapse, which affected four classrooms.

A week earlier, the roof of a junior high school in Banten collapsed, injuring 12 students. That followed reports a few days earlier of teachers in an East Java school narrowly escaping injury in a similar incident.

The situation in Bogor illustrates the nature of the school building crisis. West Java district head Rachmat Yasin said 1,825 classrooms in the district were badly damaged.

There is a special budget allocation for repairs and reconstruction from the Education Ministry, Rachmat said, but targets just 351 classrooms this year and 380 next year. Febri said ICW had found that in many cases, budget distribution was related in part to election campaigning.

"Certain parties are in charge of the budget distribution. Schools located in areas where those parties' candidates failed to win do not receive their fair share of the budget," Febri said. "Because the infrastructure budget is the responsibility of the central and regional governments, distribution depends on lobbying them."

Febri said many repair and reconstruction projects were not implemented in line with construction plans. ICW cited examples of corruption in East Java's Ponorogo district, where the prices of some building components were marked up, or where building materials of a lower standard than specified were used and the difference pocketed.

Danang Girindrawardana, the chairman of the nation's ombudsman commission, said it had filed a report about the large number of damaged schools with the government.

"In Bogor's case, the district head did not concentrate on repairing schools because he felt a lack of support from local legislators," Danang said. "But after the president visited damaged schools in Bogor, and after he issued a presidential instruction to allocate nearly Rp 21 trillion [$2.4 billion] to repair damaged schools in 2012, the district head said he would pay serious attention to the problem."

[Additional reporting by Antara.]