Home Ministry Plays Key Role in Regional Autonomy

By Gilang Galiartha Jakarta (Antara) - The Home Ministry plays a key role in implementing regional autonomy in Indonesia, especially to prevent overlapping authorities between local and central governments, the former regional autonomy minister Ryaas Rasyid said here on Thursday. "The Home Ministry has the job to supervise, evaluate and monitor the local governments, including correcting them if there is a wrong policy. Including any regulations that lead to authority overlapping," he said. The overlapping authority, as Rasyid believed, is caused by the two level governments fallacies. First, he said, the central government throught the ministries often issued policies contradictory to regional autonomy principles. "For example the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry once issued a regulation about non-oil mining, whereas the authority of mining except for oil, gas and highly irradiated materials such as uranium has already been delegated to local governments," he said. Rasyid suggested that if the central government is to issue regulations which involved regional autonomy authority it should be the supervision form, instead of binding regulation which is feared to disrupt and impede investment flow and production. "In fact there are some authorities which were sought to be taken back by the central government," he said. (*)