Wens Manggut and Levi Silalahi – It is an honor to be elected a member of the House of Representatives and the salary is also considered very good. What is a House member's exact remuneration?

The middle-aged man was seen posing in a BMW Jetlee in a car showroom. Dressed in a metallic suit and wearing a colorful tie, his hands were tightly gripped on the steering wheel of the car that cost almost Rp 1 billion. He was smiling from ear to ear. He was not a celebrity, but a member of the House of Representatives (DPR) of a nation ravaged by crisis.

This is typical of many DPR members: stylish clothes, shining cars and a large pay packet plus perks. Currently the contents of their kitchens are also under intense debate ever since the news came out that the 500 DPR members will each receive state-of-the-art washing machines with a price tag of Rp 6 million apiece. In the midst of public protest over price hikes, questions are now being asked about the various facilities members get.

How much exactly do they take home? Since the beginning of April 2000, each DPR member receives a salary of Rp 12 million, an almost three-fold increase from the previous salary of Rp 4.5 million. Not only that, allowances are theirs to take home.

For every session they attend in the DPR, they receive Rp 150,000. These are called session allowances and are given to all those who turn up for a session, whether they have a sincere concern for people's welfare or if they just come to sit and nod off, as is often seen on television. These are just the allowances from the House secretariat. If a ministry or a state-owned enterprise-or their counterparts-is extravagant enough to distribute cash, "Then the session allowances could skyrocket as much as 10 times," a House Commission IX member told Tempo.

If a member is fortunate to be chosen by his faction to join a special committee, then his income goes up even more as the session allowance in this case is Rp 750,000.

Want to listen to complaints from people in the region? Yes, there is an allowance to visit them. The term applied for this kind of remuneration is the intensive communication allowance. This totals Rp 3 million a month or Rp 36 million annually. And if DPR members want to tour the regions, they get Rp 150,000 per day to cover any out-of-pocket expenses as well as a daily lodging allowance of Rp 1.2 million. These tours are usually packed into the DPR recess periods.

An optional extra to the intensive communication allowance is the telephone allowance, whether a member lives in a private residence or an official one at Kalibata, South Jakarta. This allowance-to include power and water costs-amounts to Rp 2 million a month.

To upgrade their homes, DPR members also can take advantage of the Rp 20 million a year house renovation allowance. This comes to Rp 100 million for five years. And then there is also a Rp 1,895,600 income increase allowance as well as a rice allowance of Rp 95,000.

In addition to these allowances, there is a Rp 70 million credit facility for five years or Rp 5.8 million per month. If all the facilities are added up, it amounts to about Rp 20 million," said a Tempo source at the DPR secretariat.

Is it true that House members receive all of these perks? Not all of them, said Paskah Suzeta, a member of House Commission IX. The session allowance, for example, is only given out when draft bills are being debated, while for other sessions they only get lunch. On contributions from counterparts, "It is relative. If the company does not have tactical funds, even for meals it is difficult," he said.

The household affairs chief of the House, Ahmad Muqowan, denied that what member get amounts to luxury. He said the income of a house member was up to the president. "We didn't set it, all we do is receive it," he said. But even what they receive is often smaller than members of regional DPRs in a number of provinces. Ahmad quoted some regional DPR salaries that amount to almost twenty million rupiah.

But several DPR members feel uncomfortable about the many perks they get. Chotibul Umam Wiranu a House member from the PKB factions, feels that they get too much. "There should be a control mechanism for the allowances," Chotibul told reporters on Saturday two weeks ago. There have in fact been many protests. When the new salaries for House members were announced, for example, the Indonesian Teachers Association protested harshly at the excessive pay rise. But the problem is whether or not the people's representatives will ever in fact pay heed to these protests about their inflated salaries and allowance.