T

he city of Surakarta (familiarly known as Solo) has been spared a forced electricity outage after the municipal administration managed to convince state electricity company PT PLN that it would pay its outstanding bill on Wednesday.

“We understand the mechanism that the 2012 budget can only be disbursed in 2012 and we have been told that the payout has already been budgeted,” director of business and risk management at PT PLN, Murtaqi Syamsuddin, said over the weekend.

The decision was made following a meeting between representatives of the company and the municipal administration on Saturday at Loji Gandrung, the official residence of Mayor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

On Friday night, the company carried out its threat by switching off some 10 percent of the city’s 17,000 streetlights along Surakarta’s main streets of Jl. Adi Sucipto and Jl. Slamet Riyadi after the administration failed to pay its electricity bill as scheduled.

The company had threatened to switch off all 17,000 streetlights until the municipal administration pay its arrears, which amounted to Rp 8.9 billion for 2011.

“This is in accordance with the company’s procedures and regulations on arrears,” manager of PLN’s Surakarta network service area, Puguh Dwi Atmanto, said.

He said the municipality should not have fallen into such debt, given the fact that the public street illumination tax amounted to Rp 2.4 billion monthly, while PLN’s bill for the streetlights was only Rp 2 billion monthly.

Head of the municipal Finance and Asset Management Agency, Budi Yulistianto, said the tax went directly into locally generated revenue (PAD) and was allocated for municipal spending, while the electricity bill was paid through the municipal budget. “They cannot be split.”

Mayor Jokowi said the funds for paying for the 2011 street illumination electricity arrears had been allocated but the mechanism did not allow his administration to make the payment immediately, as it was allocated in its 2012 budget.

The municipal administration assured PLN that it would be able to pay off the bill by the beginning of 2012, and the money would be appropriated from a total of Rp 29 billion allocated for public illuminations.

“The bill will be paid for sure. We cannot do that right now simply because the mechanism doesn’t allow us to do so,” Jokowi said.

PLN’s decision not to switch off public lamps came as a relief to the head of Surakarta’s Transportation Agency, Yosca Herman Soedradjad.

Should it have been unavoidable, however, he said, it would not have applied to traffic lights.

“That could create chaos, especially with the expected increase in numbers of travelers during the Christmas and New Year holidays in the municipality,” he said.