D

espite various stigmas related to the sluggish performance of the city administration'€™s employees, more and more low-ranking civil servants are stepping up to report the wrongdoings of their superiors to Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama.

Many graft and extortion cases in the Jakarta administration are believed to be organized and carried out by more than one civil servant in a working unit. However, many are left unreported, thus fostering bad practices in the bureaucracy.

Ahok said he believed that the trend had changed recently because a number of civil servants had found the courage to provide him with information on their superiors.

'€œI often receive letters from low-rank civil servants who report their superiors. There are still many civil servants who are honest and dare to go against their superiors,'€ Ahok told reporters at City Hall recently.

He said the letters were sent to his office, and they included the civil servants'€™ names and contact information so that he could follow up the reports. The letters that he received were varied, but most were aimed at stopping or revealing a corruption conspiracy within a working unit.

Ahok said he had recently received a letter from a civil servant stating that his superior had been demanding a 1 percent commission from bid winners. Bidding values in the city administration vary from hundreds of millions to trillions of rupiah per project.

Furthermore, Ahok said that other civil servants had reported their superiors for cutting their working unit'€™s budget by 30 percent for '€œwelfare costs.'€

'€œI appreciate all of the civil servants who report these activities to me. More civil servants are coming forward because they know that I will defend them,'€ he said, adding that he encouraged his subordinates to report any irregularities to him.

Ahok said that he had asked the Jakarta Inspectorate to further investigate the reports.

Separately, inspectorate head Lasro Marbun said that he had received the reports and was looking into the matter. He said that the reports came from various working units, particularly the Sports and Youth Agency.

'€œSuch reports mostly come from subunits and subagencies in the Sports and Youth Agency. We cannot yet confirm other working units as investigations are still ongoing,'€ Lasro said over the phone on Thursday.

He further said that from preliminary investigations, the culprits were believed to be echelon III and echelon IV officials.

Similarly, an investigation by the National Police into the suspected graft case in the 2014 city budget regarding the procurement of dozens of uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) for state schools led to the naming of two civil servants as suspects '€” former infrastructure section head of the West Jakarta Education Agency, Alex Usman, and former head of the Central Jakarta Education Agency, Zainal Soleman. Both at the time were echelon IV and III officials, respectively.

The procurement of the UPS devices were slated for dozens of state schools in West and Central Jakarta. The allocation for the UPS devices in each school amounted to as much as Rp 5.8 billion (US$432,221) per unit, marked up by billions of rupiah from the original price.

'€œCivil servants who are proven to have been involved will be given severe sanctions. Those who initiated the activity may be fired as a civil servant, but those with minor involvement may be demoted from their positions,'€ Lasro said.

While the involvement of civil servants in graft cases was common, the city'€™s employees were recently under the spotlight following reports that the city administration'€™s fingerprint attendance system had been hacked to '€œedit'€ several individuals'€™ attendance hours in order to prevent cuts to their allowances.

To date, the Jakarta Inspectorate has not revealed the result of the investigation into the attendance
system.