JAKARTA: The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) arrested five suspects for alleged corruption in a procurement project at the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) on Wednesday, a scandal that raises concerns over the country’s disaster response.
The case concerns the purchase of goods and services at the BNPB, some of which was paid for with the agency’s ready-to-use funds allocated strictly for emergency needs, such as aid distribution to disaster-hit areas.
The emergency funds make up most of the agency’s annual budget this year, totalling up to Rp4.62 trillion (US$258 million), in contrast to Rp1.08 trillion in regular funding.
Among the suspects are BNPB procurement officer Gabriel Purwaka Sigit and two expert staff members, one of whom is Bima Setyawan, who is also a younger brother of BNPB chief Suharyanto. The other two suspects are from the private sector.
They were detained on Wednesday.
The arrests followed a series of raids earlier this week at several locations across Greater Jakarta, where investigators seized about Rp1.4 billion in cash, gold bars and gold certificates.
The KPK arrested nine other individuals on Tuesday for questioning, including BNPB principal secretary Rustian, who was later released as a witness. The status of the remaining individuals remains unclear.
As of Wednesday night, the KPK had yet to reveal which procurement project was under investigation.
The investigation comes as Indonesia struggles with a series of emergencies this year, including eruptions of Mount Anak Krakatau in September, persistent forest and peatland fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, and a deadly earthquake in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) in August.
The pressure is particularly evident in the ongoing wildfires and haze crisis, with hotspots in South Sumatra nearly doubling to 2,576 on Tuesday from 1,448 in September, an increase of 92%, according to the Forestry Ministry.
Hotspots in South Kalimantan also rose by 8%, although Central Kalimantan and West Kalimantan recorded declines of around one-third in their hotspot numbers.
The government increased the number of personnel deployed to tackle the fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra to 70,000 on Tuesday, up from about 44,000 officers in mid-September, according to the Office of the Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs.
They include personnel from the BNPB, the police, the military and other agencies.
BNPB acting spokesperson Berton Panjaitan said the corruption investigation would not disrupt the agency’s current services to disaster-affected communities.
“Office activities have certainly been slightly affected, but public services continue to run in line with our duties and responsibilities to manage disaster response in Indonesia,” Berton told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
He refused to comment on details of the corruption case.
The alleged corruption has deepened worries about the disaster mitigation agency’s capacity to respond to current disasters amid an already strained cash flow and dwindling human resources.
The agency has voiced concerns over budget constraints following the government’s austerity measures, with BNPB chief Suharyanto highlighting in February a steep drop of nearly 75% in this year’s regular budget from the previous year.
While the regular budget was later increased to a total of Rp5.7 trillion, the agency has since requested an additional Rp5.67 trillion in emergency funds amid mounting disaster demands.
Disaster expert Mizan Bustanul Fuady Bisri of Kobe University in Japan said the alleged corruption could worsen already weak disaster mitigation efforts in disaster-hit regions and “jeopardise future budgets” for disaster management under the agency.
“The consequence [of the corruption] is that communities will remain unprepared to face disasters and opportunities to minimise hazards of natural disasters will be missed,” he said on Wednesday.
Mizan said the corruption case was a wake-up call for the government to pay closer attention to how disaster funds are used, saying that it could no longer “depend on emergency funds” to respond to disasters. - Jakarta Post/ANN
