Amir Tejo, Surabaya – Obsessive checking of inane status messages and chatting on Web sites like Facebook has brought Surabaya to a screeching halt.

At least that's what the city's municipal administration appears to believe, and in response it has blocked access to social networking sites Yahoo Messenger and Facebook to stem plummeting performance among civil servants working for the city.

"We have intentionally blocked these two sites since last week," said Chalid Buhari, the chief of Surabaya's Information and Communication Agency.

The heads of a number of city task forces had reported a drop-off in productivity among civil servants as a result of such sites. "The use of both sites was disturbing work performance," Buhari said.

In addition to distracting workers, the relentless use of the sites was also blamed for crowded bandwidth that caused the Internet connection in governmental offices to slow to a crawl.

"So many people were using Facebook and Friendster that Internet access in the municipal government became slower when employees simultaneously" logged on to the sites, Buhari said.

Buhari said limiting access to Yahoo Messenger and Facebook could revive key online city projects, including data transfer between the city's central office and subdistrict offices, a closed-circuit television connection with police and an electronic system for the city's offices.

"At first, I didn't believe reports from the task forces. But, after the ban was applied, the effect was immediately noticed," he said.

Before the ban, around 14,000 users could be found using the Internet simultaneously. Since the ban, the peak number of users has dropped to 4,000. "Apparently, it's quite effective," Buhari said.

But some city staff members were upset by the decision, and called the ban on social networking sites excessive and intrusive. "I'm disappointed. There was no performance decline," city employee Miftakhul Arif said.