Jakartans text Ahok over complaints

JAKARTA. Tan Li Na, a 48-year-old financial staffer at the Santa Ursula Education Foundation, had little hope when she conveyed a complaint to Jakarta Deputy Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama through a text message on Monday afternoon.

Tan complained that an official at West Jakarta’s Tambora district office asked for a bribe when she wanted to legalize a letter of domicile for her foundation.

“I came to the office around 1 p.m. but no one was sat at the service booth. I had to wait for one-and-a-half hours before meeting with one of the staffers,” she told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

To get her letter legalized, Tan was asked to pay a certain amount of money by the official.

Tan, who got Ahok’s number from one of his staffers in charge of scholarships for private schools, decided to text him.

Later in the day, Tan got a reply from the number and in the evening, she got a phone call from the Tambora district deputy head Ali Maulana.

“He apologized to me and said he would take care of the letter as soon as possible,” she said.

Tan got her letter of domicile legalized the next day.

Just like Tan, hundreds of Jakartans are choosing to convey their aspirations and criticisms over public services directly to the deputy governor’s phone number 0811944728.

The Communication, Information and Public Relations Agency recorded that 4,466 complaints were delivered to the phone number from February to September. It topped other channels, such as petitions with 2,746 complaints and emails with 1,431.

Ahok’s special staffer for law and public complaints Kamilus Ellu said he received 25 to 30 messages every day on average.

He said they excluded complainants who met him directly at City Hall. From January, Kamilus had personally met 1,134 complainants.

“The issues range from illegal levies, health, education, roads and Transjakarta buses, land disputes and housing,” he said.

Kamilus said problems related to the Jakarta Health Card (KJS) healthcare program, for example, included rejections from hospitals and illegal levies.

“For example, a patient was forced to pay extra costs to have a CT scan, a service that should have been free,” he said.

Kamilus explained that after receiving the complaints, he and other staffers would verify and follow them up. “If the problems are small like the tardiness of the officials in processing documents or illegal levies, we can just call the related sub-district, district heads or agency heads to resolve them,” he said.

If the problems were hard to resolve, he added, they would conduct a meeting between complainants and related agencies.

According to Kamilus, his job was actually not part of the bureaucracy.

“The deputy governor always provides his name cards to the public. Hence, many people complain to him by phone or text message,” he said.

Ahok said he intentionally deployed his special staffer to take care of the complaints as many residents did not trust the civil servants. “Many of them want to directly meet me or the governor. We cannot handle them, so I deploy my special staffer, so they believe that their problems will be taken care of.”

Ahok said cooperating with Presidential Working Unit for Supervision and Management of Development (UKP4) SMS Center 1708, and ordering officials to be more open with the public was one of the ways to reduce the complaints.

In 2005, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono set up SMS center 9949 for the public to send him text messages with their criticisms and aspirations. (Corry Elyda/The Jakarta Post)