Haryanti Puspa Sari, Icha Rastika, Jakarta – Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) suspects that the new policy of providing a housing allowances to House of Representatives (DPR) members for the 2024-2029 period has been poorly planned bearing in mind it will be a huge waste of the state budget.
ICW researcher Seira Tamara said the total budget that will be wasted on DPR members for housing allowances will range from 1.36 trillion to 2.06 trillion rupiah over the next five years. Therefore she suspects that the allowance policy is just a way to enrich DPR members.
"ICW suspects that these interests do not have any planning so it is reasonable to suspect that the idea of providing this allowance is only to enrich DPR members without thinking about the public interest", Tamara said in a written statement on Saturday October 12.
Tamara said that the degree of the budget waste was obtained by comparing the spending patterns for the management of Members Residential Facilities (RJA) for the period 2019-2024 and a calculation of housing allowances for DPR members for one period.
She said ICW traced the procurement spending by the DPR's Secretariat General through the electronic procurement service (LPSE) then traced procurements for the DPR using a number of key words, namely Members Residential Facilities, RJA and the names of the DPR's current housing complex locations, Kalibata and Ulujami, over the 2019-2024 period.
As a result was that ICW found there were 27 procurement packages with a total contract worth 374.53 billion rupiah. Two of them were carried out in 2024 for electrical mechanical maintenance and plumbing with a total contract of 35.8 billion rupiah.
"This shows that there has already been planned spending so that DPR members can occupy the RJA", she said.
On the other hand, said Tamara, ICW calculated the allowances that would later be received by the 580 DPR members for the 2024-2029 period.
Based on a search of several media sources, DPR Secretary General Indra Iskandar has said that per month DPR members would receive additional allowances for housing of around 50-70 million rupiah.
Then, ICW did a calculation using the estimated allowance of 50-70 million rupiah for 580 DPR members for 60 months or five years. The result was that the total budget that will have to be allocated is between 1.74 trillion to 2.43 trillion rupiah.
"If this provision is continued, there will be a budget waste of around 1.36 trillion to 2.06 trillion rupiah over the next five years", she said.
Based on this, ICW is urging the DPR Secretariat General to revoke letter number B/733/RT.01/09/09/2024 which contains the points related to the provision of housing allowances for DPR members.
"DPR members [can] continue to use the RJA without the provision of housing allowances. The Secretary General of the DPR made repairs to damaged houses accompanied by a transparent and accountable procurement process", she said.
As has been reported, DPR members for the period 2024-2029 will no longer be provided with official housing facilities, but this will be compensated for with an official housing allowances amounting to around 50 million rupiah per month.
Indra Iskandar said that housing will be included as a salary components for DPR members so that it will be provided every month. DPR members are also given complete freedom about how they use the allowance.
"It's up to them, basically it will be included as a [wage] component later, the monthly allowances. If they want to rent, want to buy, they have upfront money from their own [wages], or if they own a house in the Jabodabek [Greater Jakarta] area, that's their individual right", Iskandar said when sought for confirmation on October 3.
He also explained that this decision was taken because the RJA available at this time are old and many are damaged.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "ICW: Pemberian Tunjangan Perumahan Hanya untuk Perkaya Anggota DPR".]
