Retrieving Your Lost Driver's License (SIM), Legally

How many of you makes your SIM legally? Until this moment, approaching 31 years of living in Indonesia, I have NEVER known anyone - including myself - who gets their Indonesian driver's license legally. The calo (illegal agents) practice is so much widespread and though they charge 2 to 3 times more expensive than the legal price, they do help save a lot of time of the applicants by tipping one police officer to the others to get things done in a wink.

It has been over three months since my purse got stolen, and I only equipped myself with the letter from the police that my papers were stolen. But I knew that it could not stay that way forever. So after I got some fee of a photography project I did recently, I went to the police office on Jalan Sangyang Kerobokan yesterday to retrieve my SIM. This time, legally.

I suppose it is an easier procedure to prolong your SIM's term or retrieve it when lost than to apply a new one. If you have to do it in Denpasar, Bali, this is the list of things that you need to do:

1. Go to the same police station that issued your last SIM and ask for the printout of your old driver's license at the PRODUKSI SIM department. On a piece of paper you have to write your full name, the address stated in your old SIM and your birth of date.
2. Get a doctor check up on you and make him make a good health statement of you. Next to the POLTABES - 1 minute walking from the SIM office - there is a small clinic that is probably good only to give the health statement. I giggled when I went there, but hey, it was easy and fast. It costs you Rp 25,000.
3. Go to the Bank inside the SIM office and pay Rp 60,000 (for retrieving lost SIM or prolonging your SIM). Rp 75,000 if you make a new one.
4. Submit the letter from the police that you lost your papers + the SIM printout + the proof of payment to LOKET 1.
5. Wait until you are called. It took me less than 10 minutes.
6. They will give you a registration form that you need to fill in then submit it in the LOKET KOREKSI SIM, next to Loket 1.
7. Wait until you are called. Took me 2 minutes.
8. Take the documents they gave you back to LOKET 4 - SIM production and photo booth. Here they will crosscheck your data. Takes less than 5 minutes.

9. Get your photo and thumbs finger prints taken. Takes less than 5 minutes.
10. Submit the documents to LOKET PRODUKSI SIM 8 CETAK SIM
11. Wait until you are called. Took me less than 5 minutes.
12. You get your new SIM.

Total time: 30 - 45 minutes.

The moral of the story: If it takes only 30 minutes of your time to get your driver's license rightfully, why would we need to hire a calo? Although not perfect yet, but I have noticed that the government institutions are getting better and more efficient with their services since Yudhoyono became a President. Most have no more bullshit with delaying the process as it was in the former days, and that prevents bribery. I am not denying that it still happens (corruption). Even when I got my printout, one of the officers was offering me his "magic help". But you know, it just takes a polite no to take things right. And the money will go to the right departments. And hopefully after some time, it can be used for the better sake of that department. And hopefully it will give advantage to us when they are better taken care of.

It takes a while to educate people, but it does not mean it is impossible. I'd rather be on the positive side that things can change, and it has changed, and it will always change.