Getting ticketed in Indonesia usually leaves one with two options: bribe the police officer at the time of the violation (if solicited) or take the moral high road, which involves having to queue along with hundreds of others to pay the fine at a scheduled court date.
But those days may soon be over. The National Police Traffic Corps plans to launch e-Tilang, a smartphone app that enables violators to pay their fines online without having to appear in court. It would, theoretically, also make bribing police officers unnecessary thanks to the ease of paying fines.
According to National Police Traffic Corps Chief Inspector General Agung Budi, e-Tilang will first be available on Android phones. The way it works is that when the user commits a traffic violation, the police officer gives them a unique code through the app that contains the violation and the corresponding fine. The user can then use the code to pay their fine at an ATM or via mobile banking for added convenience.
The e-Tilang app is scheduled to launch at an unspecified time in 2017, though it appears that it might come earlier in the year rather than later. The program will be available to 16 provincial police departments, including the Jakarta Metro Police.
“Right now we’re still at the discussion phase, evaluation, socialization, and agreeing to our perceptions [about e-Tilang]. After that we can start [the program],” said AKBP Budiyanto, head of the Traffic Law Enforcement sub-division at the Jakarta Metro Police, as quoted by Otomania yesterday.
The announcement of e-Tilang comes during a time when the government has been making a very public push to battle the widespread perception of corruption within the bureaucracy and law enforcement agencies.
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