Rizky Amelia – The antigraft commission will request a loan of more investigators from the National Police at the start of next year to make up for its current manpower shortage, an official said on Wednesday.

Johan Budi, a spokesman for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), said that his office was seeking an additional 30 investigators to help it work through its backlog of cases. "The KPK will file a request with the police for more investigators this coming January," he said.

He added that the two law enforcement agencies would also discuss the implementation of a recently issued government decree that increased the total length of time that an investigator could be on loan to the KPK from eight years to 10 years.

The KPK has faced a manpower shortage since October, when police abruptly ordered a recall of 20 investigators on the pretext that their career advancement prospects were being held up while they were deployed at the KPK.

However, the move was widely seen as a retaliation against the KPK for its decision to name two police generals as suspects for taking kickbacks in connection to the procurement of driving simulators for the traffic police.

Since then, several more investigators have either been recalled or left voluntarily, leaving the KPK with just 52 investigators currently, down from 83 last year.

The shortage had prompted the antigraft agency to begin a training program to develop its own internal pool of investigators from among current staff. However, Johan said that of the 65 people who took part in the training program, only 28 met the criteria to become investigators.

He added they would begin working in their new capacity at the end of January. "They're currently taking part in a training program that began at the start of December," he said.

To address the manpower shortage at the KPK, which also relies on the Attorney General's Office to provide it with prosecutors, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issued a new regulation earlier this month extending the amount of time that investigators and prosecutors could serve with the commission.

Under the previous regulation, in force since 2005, the officers on loan could only stay on for a maximum of eight years and could be recalled to their original institutions at any time.

But under the terms of the new regulation, they will serve an initial term of four years with the KPK, after which the antigraft body can extend the loan period for another four years.

Once the second period is up, the KPK will be allowed a further extension of two years, Justice and Human Rights Minister Amir Syamsuddin said earlier. The regulation also forbids the police and the AGO from recalling the investigators while they are working on a case.

The KPK gave a lukewarm response to the announcement, with Johan pointing out that the commission had actually been seeking to retain the officers for up to 12 years, but had been locked out of the discussion by the government.

"Initially we were involved, but after a while the minister for state administrative reform left us out of the discussion, and the 12-year working period [request] became 10 years," he said earlier this month.

When KPK leaders met with the president in early December, they learned that the final form of the regulation would only allow them to have the investigators for a maximum of 10 years.

Johan said the initial suggestion of four years followed by two extensions of four years each was previously approved, but when the KPK leaders met with the president before the regulation was issued, they were told that it had been changed.

He added the president had to sign the regulation to prevent the KPK from losing its current batch of investigators, most of whom were recruited eight years ago.

"If the eight-year limit still stood, we would have been left with only four investigators in March, and we haven't started the process to recruit more," he said.

The new regulation was also poorly received by legal analysts, who said it failed to accommodate the KPK's interests.

Indonesia Corruption Watch warned that as long as the regulation provided no room for the KPK to recruit its own investigators, it would never be able to resolve its human resources problem thoroughly.