Touts ease the hassle of getting passports

Saturday, April 21, 2001
By Hera Diani

JAKARTA (JP): Obtaining a document such as a passport in this country can be a major headache.
Long drawn-out bureaucratic procedures, irritating officers and pushy touts are among obstacles that have to be faced throughout the process.
No wonder people prefer to go to a service bureau or pay middlemen to get their passports done fast, even though it may cost them more than double.
Take Hery (not his real name), for example, who works at a TV production house.
The 26-year-old man was assigned by his office to go to Europe and was going to make a passport. But little did he know that it would cost him almost Rp 1 million to get it.
"I went to Tangerang immigration office. There, a man with an immigration office badge offered me help," he told The Jakarta Post recently.
The man asked for Rp 600,000 (US$54.5) to get him his passport, Hery said.
The official fee is Rp 110,000 for a 24-page passport and Rp 260,000 for a 48-page passport to be completed in a week.
"I didn't have much time so I said yes as long as the passport can be processed in one day," Hery said.
But then the man asked for another Rp 200,000 because Hery's identity card is less than a month old.
"He said that many people obtain ID cards in Tangerang to make things easier though they actually live in Jakarta," Hery said.
"The next day, I met a lady who only paid Rp 500,000 with the assistance of an 'insider'," he said.
Scalpers can easily be found at every immigration office, except the Central Jakarta office. Just walk inside and someone will approach and offer their services.
Someone like Marzuki (not his real name), a scalper at the crowded North Jakarta immigration office, located near Tanjung Priok port.
Marzuki admitted to being a middleman for 10 years now.
"There are many touts here. Most of them are unemployed sailors. As for me, I also work at a travel agency," said the man, who is in his 40s.
He charged between Rp 300,000 ($27.3) to Rp 600,000 per passport ($54.6), depending on the number of passport pages, either 24 or 48, and how long it can be completed.
"The faster you want to get it done, the more money you have to pay. But it's negotiable," he said.
"If all your documents are in order, let's go to my car outside and arrange everything. It's now 2 p.m., your passport will be ready by 10 a.m. tomorrow," he said.
If you are wary of touts you might as well go to a service bureau to arrange your passport.
They charge you somewhere between Rp 400,000 to Rp 750,000 depending on the type of passport and how quickly you need it.
The offices also provide a service where they will pick up the documents from your house and deliver your passport. All you need to do is just go to the immigration office to get your photograph taken.
However, for Indonesians of Chinese descent, they need to include their citizenship papers and pay an additional cost of Rp 100,000 to Rp 150,000 for the screening process.
Spokesman for the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights' Directorate General of Immigration, Mursanudin Ghani said that some of the service bureaus are indeed legalized.
"The bureaus are those who have been trained by the Ministry's Jakarta office. You recognize them from their badge," he told The Jakarta Post over the phone on Wednesday.
"It's a common thing in every country where people are busy and don't have time to arrange this kind of thing by themselves," he added.
About the price, Mursanuddin said, it is logical that the bureaus earn a profit from it.
"It's not that I'm justifying it, if there are complaints, please report them to us," he said.
Mursanuddin, however, admitted that it is difficult to combat scalpers.
"We can't take measures on them because that's the authority of the ministry's provincial office," he asserted.
Mursanuddin said that hopefully the whole process will be computerized so people could then just pay through a bank account.
"But it costs a lot of money. We actually received a soft loan of some $26 million from Spain, but the project was called off, I don't know why," he said.
About the discrimination over Chinese Indonesians, Mursanuddin was reluctant to provide a justification, saying that "there are some things that can not be disclosed".
"It's very easy to get a new birth certificate or an identity card. So we have to do the screening," he finally said, adding that the screening is officially free-of-charge.
However, concerning the hustle and bustle in obtaining passports, there are actually some people who do not mind going through the process all by themselves.
A woman at the North Jakarta immigration office was extending her passport without any assistance from middlemen and the process was swift.
"My friends said that immigration officers will make the process difficult if I don't give them money, so I gave them some. But they returned it to me," she said.
Ndari, 30, also refused to use either a tout or bureau, saying that her budget was limited.
"Besides that, I also want to know what it's like to arrange it by myself. And it turns out to be okay," she told the Post at the East Jakarta immigration office.
"Yes, I have to wait in line for three hours to get my photograph taken. But other than that, everything has gone smoothly and I got my passport on time," she added.

Labels: legal, urban

Posted by hera at Saturday, April 21, 2001 3:35 AM | Permalinks