Scalping - Indo style...

As an expat living in Indonesia, there are always documents needing renewal, Residence Visa’s, Police ID Cards, Work Permits, Multi Entry Permits, the list can be endless dependant upon exactly what your legal position is here.

Indonesians also have similar problems, but the Jakarta Post decided to highlight the short cuts to the tedious process in one of the government departments, the Passport Office.

Within the expat business community we are often obliged to sub-contract these processes in order to ensure that the employee is not required to undergo the hours in a queue and some of the more complex “subtleties”  (BRIBES) involved in processing documents.

I’ll publish the article in its whole, I think it provides an insight into how far into the system that corruption has spread and also, how much that this corruption is taken for granted by the populace.

Scalpers offer express lane to passport processing

People swarmed the East Jakarta Immigration office, jostling in and out of different rooms just to get a small yet important gateway book, the passport.

Anyone can get a passport simply by standing in line for hours and purchasing a Rp 5,000 (50 U.S. cents) application form, filling it in and then submitting it with all the required documents, including family data, identity card, birth certificate and diplomas.

Three days later one comes back, pays the standard Rp 270,000 passport fee before being photographed, fingerprinted and interviewed. This takes a few more hours.

"After completing these procedures, your passport will be done in five days to one week," an official in a light brown uniform at information said recently.

Or you can contact Kiki or one of the other many neatly dressed men and women who merge with the crowd at the immigration office offering their services to passport applicants. They are the scalpers, the middle-men or women who haunt the immigration office almost every day, trying to convince applicants to use their services.

"I can arrange your passport, but there is a price to pay. It is just like buying a train ticket. There are VIP, business and economy classes," said Kiki, a forty-year-old woman with a serious stare.

She then stated her rates. For Rp 1.5 million, the passport is printed and done in one day, for Rp 700,000, it takes two days, and for Rp 500,000, it is done in five days.

"It's all in the game. We give some money to certain officials at certain desks to facilitate the passport arrangements, so by giving more, it will be done more quickly," said Imam, another scalper.

He added that if someone arranged for their passport and did not submit all the required documents, the application might be rejected by the immigration office. On the other hand, if someone who lacked documents arranged for the passport through a scalper, he could get it with the help of insiders, no problem.

"You don't even need to queue for hours and go through the hassle. All you need to do is to agree with the price, hand me some documents, and I'll call you to do the interview, photographs and fingerprinting sessions," he said.

Although arranging passports through scalpers is more expensive, some people still use this kind of service. In a small restaurant right beside the office, a young woman haggles with a scalper.

"Can you trim down the price you've offered? It is too expensive for me," said the young woman.

"I don't think so MBak, Rp 450,000 is the final offer," said the male scalper the man.

Another applicant, April, a middle-aged business woman wanting to renew her expired passport, said, "I prefer paying them because I don't want to queue all day long, be fussed over and slowed down by bureaucracy at the immigration office.

"I'm a very busy person, I don't have time for that. I need my passport done quickly."

Santo, who needed his passport immediately because he had to go abroad in three days, had a similar opinion.

"The immigration office said my passport would be done in five to six days. I thought I could bypass the process by using a scalper. See, I have had my passport done today," he said while showing off his new passport. 

It's on a daily basis that I hear about the cost of Driving Licences, Visa (Kitas) Renewal, every permit under the sun renewal, getting the Electricity Company to visit the house to fix a problem, car registration, emission testing, in fact anything that requires either a state run company or a government organisation to become involved requires some financial assistance.

The latest round of media attention revolved around the execution of the Bali Bombers, with most Indonesians becoming increasingly bored with the non stop updates from the TV stations and the Press on what exactly was happening during their time on death row. In addition, the letters and call to "Jihad" issued from within the prison walls was facilitated, it is assumed, by Prison Officers who were supplementing their incomes.

Where does it all stop?  

There is a famous anecdote that on an American Presidents Desk there was a sign which stated "The Buck Stops Here".

Within Indonesia, similar signs possibly exist and that every bureaucrat has one that says "Starts"