Bagus BT Saragih, Jakarta – A security guard, sitting and smoking at the reception of Building C at the Agriculture Ministry complex, answered, "Fifth floor", when asked about the location of the little-known Indonesia Sugar Council.
It was 1 p.m. on Thursday but the long corridor on the fifth floor was quiet. One of the signs in the corridor read "Indonesia Sugar Council".
One woman and two men wearing uniforms were sitting at their desks among dozens of other empty desks in the 100-square-meter room. According to a 2006 Agriculture Ministry decree, the council actually has 86 members of staff.
The woman refused requests for an interview and suggested The Jakarta Post get in touch with the head of the council's secretariat, Bambang Priyono, who was not at the office at the time. "Bambang has been in Bandung for days on official matters. You can come back here next Friday," the woman said.
Administrative Reforms Minister E.E. Mangindaan recently announced that the council was among six nonstructural state bodies that would be merged with other institutions with similar functions. "What the institutions do are more or less the same as similar bodies. It is duplication or redundancy of authorities that leads to the potential waste of state funds," he said.
Another body in this group is the National Aeronautics and Space Council. According to a 2007 study by the State Administrative Agency, the council had conducted a meeting only once – back in 1980 – since its establishment in 1955.
The ministry has recommended eliminating four other nonstructural bodies, including the National Book Council and the National Regulatory and Management Body for Housing and Residential Affairs.
Such state bodies, now numbering 88, have been under scrutiny since 2005 because of their ineffectiveness and potential waste of state funds. Such bodies are formed by the President and are structurally not under any ministries. Citing data from the Finance Ministry, Mangindaan said the cost to the state of funding all nonstructural state bodies was Rp 14.9 trillion (US$1.74 billion) in 2010, or 1.42 percent of the total state budget.
"However, many of the bodies do not contribute significantly to the state," he said. He added that officials from some of the 10 bodies may have known the results of the study prior to his announcement. "There was a sudden surge of communication with us. They showed us their programs as if to prove they were necessary," Mangindaan said.
The ministry findings led to questions over several others bodies. The National Commission for Elderly People, for example, may be unfamiliar to many Indonesians even though it was established in 2004. The commission occupies two floors of the four-story Aneka Krida building at the Social Affairs Ministry in Jakarta.
Most of the rooms in the commission's office were locked up when the Post visited earlier on Thursday.