Many Reports, Wondama Papua Regency BOS Funds Must Be Audited

DPRD Wondama Bay/ Antara

JAKARTA - The Regional House of Representatives of Teluk Wondama district, Papua Province requested that the School Operational Assistance funds or BOS for elementary and junior high schools be audited by the relevant agencies.

The chairman of Commission B of the Wondama Regency DPRD, Mathelda Fenetruma said that her party received many reports from the public and findings in the field suggesting that there had been misuse of BOS funds at the elementary and junior high school levels.

He said that public complaints about the use of BOS funds mostly came from students' parents, students themselves, and even teachers.

In general, community reports are about the non-disclosure of the amount of BOS funds, student data that is not according to the facts at school, and the allocation of BOS funds that are not right on target.

In fact, he continued, it was suspected that there were unscrupulous school principals who used BOS funds for personal interests.

Therefore, he requested that an investigative audit or an audit of a special nature be carried out to find out where the BOS funds were used to ascertain whether there was any misappropriation.

The Chairman of Commission C of the Wondama Regional House of Representatives, Remran Sinadia, also made the same request, who asked the relevant agencies to conduct an audit of BOS funds in the area.

According to Remran, an audit is needed to measure the impact of BOS funds on school development in Wondama including its effect on the overall quality of education.

"Not only BOS funds, but we also encourage an audit of budget management at the Education Office", Remran said in Wasior, reported by Antara, Thursday, June 3.

Responding to the Regional House of Representative's request, the Regional Secretary for Wondama, Denny Simbar, said that the authority to examine or audit BOS funds was actually not attached to the Regional Government considering that the source of BOS funds was the APBN.

BOS funds come down from the center through the Provincial APBD (Regional Budget) and are then directly transferred to the account of the recipient school. So that the institution that has more authority to conduct audits is the Financial and Development Supervisory Agency.

However, to answer the Regional House of Representative's request, said the Regional Secretary, the Regent could ask the Inspectorate to conduct a special audit of BOS funds as a form of supervision in the regions.

He added that the 2020 BOS funds that entered all schools in Wondama reached more than 12 billion, directly transferred by the provincial government to school accounts.