T

he Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry has issued an order requiring all civil servants, military personnel and members of the National Police to submit regular wealth reports.

Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Yuddy Chrisnandi signed the order on Wednesday.

'€œUsually, those who submit wealth reports are those promoted to new positions, but now all civil servants, from echelon I to IV, are required [to do so],'€ Yuddy told a press conference at the ministry in South Jakarta. '€œThis also applies to the Indonesian Military [TNI] and the police.'€

The minister'€™s order also called on the heads of all government institutions to formulate policies that would require subordinates to submit wealth reports via a specially-designed form.

In addition, Yuddy ordered the Government Internal Oversight Body (APIP), which is set up in all government institutions from the national to local level, to verify the wealth reports.

The 1999 Clean and Good Governance Law makes it mandatory for ministers and state officials to report their wealth on official report forms to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) soon after assuming office and then when they leave office.

However, the rule only applies to high-ranking officials, mostly from echelon II and higher.

Yuddy said the law was inadequate for curbing corruption.

'€œIndications of corruption are not only found among high-ranking officials but among middle- and low-ranking officials,'€ he said.

To ensure that wealth reports would be thoroughly verified, the ministry had submitted a draft of a presidential instruction to revive the roles and functions of the APIP.

'€œThe APIP has been ineffective and that'€™s one of the reasons this country has failed to produce a clean government and has low-quality public services,'€ Yuddy said.

The APIP is expected to verify the bulk of wealth reports from civil servants before submitting them to the KPK, as the antigraft body does not have regional offices.

To make it easier for civil servants to submit the reports and for the APIP to verify them, the ministry had provided a simplified form as a template, Yuddy said.

The form is expected to be more simple than the one used by the KPK, considering the large number of civil servants in the country, which now stands at 4.7 million.

'€œWe only need two pages, such as names, ranks, spouses and children'€™ names, location and number of properties, amount of money in the bank and so on,'€ Yuddy said.

Ministry spokesman Herman Suryatman said there would be no punishment for those who failed to submit the reports.

'€œWe will refer to Government'€™s Regulation No. 53/2010 on civil servants'€™ obedience. One of the obligations of civil servants is to do their jobs. The circular is one of their jobs,'€ he said on Tuesday.