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ollowing widespread reports of contract cleaners and sweepers'€™ salaries being siphoned off, allegedly by their superiors in the city administration, Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama has vowed that his office will take stern action against such misdeeds.

'€œWe have decided to report the matter to the Jakarta Police. The contract workers'€™ salaries may not be deducted for whatever reason. Those who have been cutting the workers'€™ pay must be jailed,'€ Ahok told reporters at City Hall recently.

Ahok acknowledged that such practices were rampant, saying that he had received reports that a number of civil servants and some among the contract workers themselves had been deducting money from the workers'€™ pay.

Several contract workers with the Jakarta Sanitation Agency had previously claimed that they have never received their full salaries, as their supervisors had long been cutting their pay every month.

A contract worker who usually covers the areas surrounding the Gelora subdistrict office in Senayan, Central Jakarta, said that her supervisor demanded she give him up to Rp 360,000 every month.

'€œThe supervisor said that our pay should be cut for each of our days off as we received Rp 90,000 for every working day,'€ the worker, who refused to disclose her name for fear of repercussions from the supervisor, said on Tuesday.

Under normal conditions, every contract worker receives a monthly salary at the regional minimum wage level of Rp 2.7 million from the city administration through Bank DKI ATMs. Another Central Jakarta Sanitation Agency'€™s contract worker, however, also claimed that she had never received that amount of money.

'€œEvery month, after taking our salaries from the ATMs, we usually gather with the supervisor on the street. Then he asks each of us to give him some of our money that we just received,'€ said the worker, who is usually assigned to the street in front of Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Senayan.

She lamented that she and around 50 other contract workers in the area had no option but to bow to pressure from their supervisor, a former contract worker whom she alleged collaborated with his superior in the practice, for fear of losing their long-held jobs.

'€œEven the section head once came and told us to never talk about this matter to anyone, including the agency head. If we did, he said that we would be dismissed. For sure, all of us were scared,'€ she said.

'€œThe practices have been committed since I first worked here around two years ago,'€ she added.

Allegations are rife that such wrongdoings have also taken place in other municipalities of Jakarta.

In Sunter, North Jakarta, one of the Sanitation Agency'€™s contract workers also claimed that her monthly salary had for a long time been cut by her supervisor by up to Rp 100,000.

'€œThe supervisor demands Rp 100,000 from our monthly wages. Although we deplore this situation, contract workers have remained tight-lipped as we are afraid to move against him,'€ she said on Wednesday.

She added that such practices had been committed by her supervisor for years. '€œI have been suffering from them since I started working around two years ago,'€ she said. (alm)