P

resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has stepped up efforts to eradicate illegal levies by establishing a special taskforce authorized with carrying out investigations and to enforce the law, including sting operations, to combat the decades-long practices that have long hampered public services across the country.

Jokowi has signed a presidential regulation on the establishment of the taskforce, which is under his direct control and commanded by Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto.

The National Police’s general supervision inspector (Irwasum) Comr. Gen. Dwi Priyatno will lead the taskforce while the junior attorney general for internal monitoring and the Home Ministry’s inspector general will act as his deputies.

The taskforce will also involve officials from the Law and Human Rights Ministry, the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), the Ombudsman’s office, the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) and the military police, who are expected to help tackle illegal levies in the military.

“The President’s signing the regulation is a strong message that the eradication measures should also look into internal practices,” Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said.

Under the regulation, the taskforce also has the authority to gather information and make recommendations on sanctions for culprits as well as to draft preventive measures to root out illegal levies. They must report the progress of their work to the President at least once every three months, Wiranto said.

The taskforce is currently setting up three reporting channels, namely the saberpungli.id online platform, SMS number 1193 and the 193 call center. These will allow people to file reports directly to the taskforce, as an effective means of rooting out such practices.

“Therefore, not only will the taskforce hunt such practices but we also call on people to proactively file reports on such illegal levies directly to us,” Wiranto said on Friday, adding that the three channels were expected to be ready for use next week. He stressed that the reports would be strictly confidential.

Jokowi’s move to establish the taskforce was made after the massive scale of the practice of charging illegal levies was exposed and caught the interest of people nationwide.

Many might see it as similar to the move by Jokowi’s predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2009 when he established the Judicial Mafia taskforce in response to the public outcry over widespread malpractice in the judicial system.

Yudhoyono’s taskforce has been disbanded but anticorruption activists argue judicial malpractice still exists.

Following Jokowi’s call to fight against illegal levies last week, a number of operations have been conducted at different places in the country in the past couple of days. The raids found numerous public officials in several offices, such as transportation agencies and population and civil registration offices, asking people for illegal fees.

The charging of illegal levies also appears to have targeted foreign nationals. A civil servant in Bitung municipality in North Sulawesi has been accused of collecting Rp 500,000 (US$38.28) in return for issuing Indonesian identity cards (KTP) to Filipino nationals arrested last month for illegal fishing.

The National Police, meanwhile, have recorded 69 cases of illegal levies involving 85 officers from Oct. 1 to 16.

The practice of marriage administrators asking for extra fees from soon-to-be-married couples made headlines in late 2013 after officials in Kediri, East Java, threatened to strike following the prosecution of a marriage administrator for demanding Rp 10,000 in return for his services.

The taskforce will begin by identifying which areas are prone to illegal levies in all ministries and state institutions that oversee public services.