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Impromptu visits fine, but insufficient
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, too, is famous for his impromptu visits ever since he was the mayor of Surakarta and later the Jakarta governor. Along with reporters, he would stop by public services under his jurisdiction to check for inefficiencies.
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Jambi governor Zumi Zola (instagram.com/zumizolazulkifliforjambi/File)
Z
umi Zola, Governor of Jambi province, put on quite a show recently when he paid an impromptu visit to the Raden Mattaher regional hospital in Jambi. He reportedly arrived at 1 a.m. with a group of men carrying cameras, only to see that the reception desk was deserted.
The governor proceeded to the next room, which revealed night shift workers trying to unwind. He was enraged. After lining up the tired-eyed workers, he lectured them on how he had received too many complaints about the hospital’s poor service and therefore pledged disciplinary actions. This was all caught on camera.
Governor Zumi is not the only elected official having exercised power in such a way. Governor Ganjar Pranowo of Central Java was also captured angry on camera after exposing weight station officers being bribed by truck drivers in exchange for allowing overloaded trucks to pass. Manpower Minister Hanif Dhakiri, on a different occasion, was filmed having an outburst when he caught a group of undocumented foreign workers in a mining camp in South Kalimantan.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, too, is famous for his impromptu visits ever since he was the mayor of Surakarta and later the Jakarta governor. Along with reporters, he would stop by public services under his jurisdiction to check for inefficiencies.
An impromptu visit is entertaining, but it has limitations. First, it may not be thorough, especially when the governor has a fit of rage. We could use a simple model with three players to explain this argument: a governor, agents and consumers. Let us assume the governor is willing to establish first-class public services for consumers.
To help with daily operations, the governor employs hundreds of agents, for instance hospital workers. In a common, rational setting, agents defer to the governor but not to consumers. When the governor is present, agents will exert their best efforts on the job.
Agents eventually learn that the governor is time-constrained. With dozens of public services in a province, the probability that error is reported and followed up on is small. If an impromptu visit happens, they might feel rattled for a day or two but not forever.
