Council gives nod to busway subsidy

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The City Council has approved an increased busway subsidy for 2007, prompting the system's operator to back down from a planned increase in ticket prices.

The chairman of Commission C on economic affairs, Daniel Abdullah Sani, said Tuesday the council had allocated an additional Rp 31 billion (US$3.42 million) to subsidize the busway's operations this year.

Earlier this year, the administration allocated Rp 203 billion to subsidize the busway in 2007.

"The City Council, after thorough deliberation, agreed during a plenary session (last Thursday) to include the subsidy in the 2007 revised city budget," Daniel said.

TransJakarta and the city administration, through the Jakarta Transportation Agency, had earlier approached the council with three choices.

The first was to raise busway ticket prices from Rp 3,500 to at least Rp 5,000 per trip. The second was to increase the subsidy for the busway and the third was to increase both the subsidy and ticket prices.

TransJakarta first proposed raising ticket prices in the face of protests by bus suppliers Trans Batavia, Jakarta Trans Metropolitan and Jakarta Mega Trans, which said they were receiving delayed payments and 40 percent less than they should have collected for every kilometer run by their buses.

TransJakarta, which pays the suppliers, said it did not have "sufficient money to pay them based on a contract due to huge operational costs in line with the increased number of busway lines".

The number of busway corridors has increased from three last year to seven early this year, and will see three new corridors operating next year with construction on them expected to be finalized by the end of the year.

TransJakarta said the subsidy allocated for this year alone "is not enough and it only took into account revenue from ticket sales".

It also said its limited budget for operations had forced it to provide "minimal services" to commuters by cutting the number of operating buses, causing delays in bus arrivals and long queues at busway stops.

The council, Daniel said, had agreed to increase the subsidy to keep the busway operating at current levels "at least until the end of this year", despite councilors' earlier suspicion of graft in the TransJakarta management.

"That's why we only granted Rp 31 billion of the Rp 55 billion the administration and TransJakarta proposed. We cut a list of planned expenses from their proposal because we found them unnecessary," said Daniel.

Earlier this year, the Anti-Corruption Court convicted Budi Susanto, the president director of PT Armada Usaha Bersama, a bus supplier for the busway's first corridor, tender committee chairman Sylvira Ananda and former city transportation agency head Rustam Effendy Sidabutar, who was assigned by then governor Sutiyoso in 2003 to develop the first busway corridor.

The court found the three guilty of embezzling more than Rp 12 billion in taxpayer money.