Tony Hotland, Jakarta – A Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) report on the House of Representatives has revealed that legislators left hundreds of millions of rupiah worth of unpaid electric and telephone bills, and it has forced the House to use re-allocated budget money to pay them off.
The report, presented to the House on Tuesday, also contains a statement that former legislators took away state property from their official residence after not getting re-elected, causing a state losses of at least Rp 419 million (about US$41,900).
The audit also shows that the state could lose as much as Rp 839.16 million if it fails to collect the debts from the legislators dwelling in the House's Kalibata housing complex in South Jakarta in the years 2004 and 2005.
The total arrears consist of Rp 474.94 million in electricity bills for 2004, Rp 136.01 million in telephone bills just for December 2004, Rp 89.95 million and Rp 138.26 million in electricity and telephone bills, respectively, for January to June of this year.
The report says the arrears for use in 2004, however, have been cleared after the House secretary-general took out unspent funds from another area of the 2004 budget to cover the debts.
Legislators in the 1999-2004 period each received Rp 1.75 million for utility bill allowances every month. Legislators in the current period receive Rp 2 million for their utilities. The current members of the House have, however, proposed a raise of up to Rp 5.5 million for utility bill allowances in the 2006 budget.
The House secretary-general Faisal Djamal confirmed that a portion of the budget from unspent allocations had been spent to pay the debts.
"The arrears were caused by legislators delaying the payment even after we reminded them. They kept on delaying, but we arranged with PT Telkom and PT PLN not to cut off the connections, because it would've been inconvenient for legislators to have such disconnections," he told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
Telkom is the state-controlled telecommunications firm, while PLN is the state power firm.
In some cases, Faisal said, the arrears had also been caused by use of utilities connections during a transition period between the old and new legislators using the houses.
However, one legislator questioned the arrears and called them suspicious. "I suspect there has been a conspiracy between the secretariat general, PLN and Telkom to fake the arrears, and then split the payment money between them," he alleged.
Based on his experience so far this year, he said it was difficult to confirm the truth of the bills due to the odd, massive figures appearing in the bills.
Suryama M. Sastra from the House Ways and Means committee said he was proposing that such electricity and telephone allowances be treated as reimbursements.
"So, the House pays based exactly on the amount of the bills, so that legislators don't instead use the monthly allowance on other expenses," said the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) legislator.
On housing inventories, the BPK report asserts that many of appliances and pieces of furniture remained unaccounted for after the five-yearly auction in the transition period in late 2004. It was caused by an unorganized system of recording the inventories, the report concluded.