Government urged to cancel the plan to increase the power tariff

A number of non-governmental organizations including Working Group on Power Restructuring (WG-PSR), Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) and International NGO Forum on Indonesia Development (INFID) have called on the government to cancel the plan to increase electricity tariffs by six percent per three months beginning January next year until the end of 2004, Kompas reported on Saturday.

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Fabby Tumiwa of WG PDR, Tulus Abadi of YLKI and Muhammad Suhud of INFID said that the planned increase in the electricity tariff was too high. They called on the government to form an independent body to assess the ideal level of the electricity increase so any increase in the electricity tariff would not burden the people.

Fabby said that the development of the electricity infrastructure should be financed by the government through the people?s income tax, not raising the tariff. The electricity tariff would be raised to increase the rate of return of the state electricity company PLN by eight percent but no assessment had been made to find out the capability of the consumers to pay the new tariff, he added.

Tulus said that reasons of the planned power increase such the high depreciation of the rupiah against the U.S. dollar, the existing low electricity tariff, the increase in fuel price and the need of PLN to increase the power supply by 10 percent a year were baseless.

PLN?s tariff increase plan has won approval from both government and members of the Legislative Council (DPR). According to the government the planned tariff increase would be accompanied by a sanction measure.

According to the draft which was prepared by the Directorate General of Electricity and Energy Use, the 10 percent reduction of the electricity billing will be imposed if the services provided by PLN could not meet the minimum requirement such as if the duration of power interruption or blackout, and the number of power interruption exceed the tolerable level. The sanction is also imposed if the electricity billing exceeds more than 10 percent of the amount stated in the electricity meter. (*)