Sydney, 14 April 2017
A friend of mine shared her story on Instagram last night. She said there was a young lady who was applying for tax ID to her desk in office. The current regulation for tax ID registration is that only one tax ID is given for each family, held by the head of the family, e.g. husband. The lady said her husband left them and was unknown since then. She brought a letter from headman to support her status. However, as stated in her ID card, her status is married. After consulting with some colleagues, my friend rejected the lady's application. The reason is the fact that her status is still married thus tax office cannot issue tax ID to married woman. The lady then cried in my friend's desk.
I have been in that situation when I asked for a reference letter from district office for applying a police clearance letter. The staff couldn't issue the reference letter since I couldn't give my father's detail. I was so angry at that moment but I didn't show it up. I was so angry since how can a father who has neglected his kids is still considered very important for his kids' administration. I felt like the bureaucracy in Indonesia is so fall behind. It is so unfair for people like us.
Bureaucracy is created to make an order, administration, and control. However, bureaucracy in Indonesia is inefficient and quite often transferring the administration works to the customers. Bureaucrats do not want to work extra but only receive a finish result. I am a bureaucrat myself, at the same time I am also a customer of government services. Reflecting from both situations, I always try to give my best service to my customers, but quite often it ends up with my disappointment since the environment does not support me and does not agree with me despite I have tried and sacrificed a lot. This also makes me to set a high expectation to the public services, and quite often I got angry when I couldn't get what I expect from them.
