KPK Highlights Hundreds of Million Garut Regency Official Travel Budget Abroad

JAKARTA - The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) highlighted the budget for foreign official travel by the Government of Garut Regency, West Java in 2023. This expenditure is said to reach hundreds of millions of rupiah but is included in the spending ceiling on overcoming extreme poverty.

"We found an area, let's call it Garut Regency IDR 784 million for official trips abroad," said KPK Deputy for Prevention and Monitoring Pahala Nainggolan in a discussion broadcast online quoted on Tuesday, August 29.

Pahala later said that the use of the budget was inappropriate. This is because the budget for individual social assistance (bansos) in that area is actually zero or nonexistent.

Thus, he questioned the correlation or relationship between business trips abroad and the alleviation of extreme poverty in the village.

"What's the matter, sir?" said Pahala when communicating with the district government.

Furthermore, Pahala showed that the Garut Regency Expenditure Budget for Extreme Poverty was IDR 799,305,947,474 or IDR 799.3 billion. The amount is actually reasonable but the allocation is odd.

Of that amount, there is a budget for services and honorarium spending of IDR 2,274,230,000 and office equipment spending of IDR 1,741,471,533.

Next, there is also a business travel budget of IDR 7,232,851,600 or IDR 7.2 billion; shopping for food and drink for meetings IDR 1,687,879,300; and foreign service IDR 784,305,000

Pahala regrets this because social assistance is actually the basis for poverty alleviation. He hopes that in the future all regional governments can utilize the Regional Development Information System (SIPD).

Contacted separately, Pahala said that this system was felt to be able to prevent irregularities. "So the president's complaint about stunting of Rp. 10 billion turns out that those for (shopping, ed) eating plus there are 27 thousand applications can now be monitored," he explained.

However, this program has not been able to run optimally. The reason, the budget is still a constraint.

"There is no funding from the Ministry of Finance," concluded Pahala.