Effectiveness of Consumer Protection across Public Service Sectors in Indonesia from a Normative Juridical Perspective
Abstract
Public services in Indonesia, covering sectors such as education, health, transportation, and electricity, remain vital to daily life, yet consumers within these sectors continue to face poor service quality, non-transparent tariffs, and weak complaint mechanisms despite the long-standing existence of Law Number 8 of 1999 concerning Consumer Protection. Prior studies have generally examined consumer protection either as a broad legal certainty issue or within a single sector, leaving a gap in cross-sectoral analysis of how consumer protection is actually enforced across the full range of public services regulated under Law Number 25 of 2009. This study aims to identify the main problems consumers face, evaluate the effectiveness of existing regulations across twelve public service sectors, and formulate recommendations for strengthening consumer protection. Using a normative juridical method with statute and conceptual approaches, this study analyzes primary legal materials alongside complaint data from the Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia. The findings show that regulatory frameworks are generally adequate in written form, but enforcement effectiveness varies sharply between sectors overseen by a single independent regulator, such as financial services under the Financial Services Authority, and sectors whose oversight is dispersed across local governments, such as education, environment, and clean water, where protracted delays and service denial dominate reported maladministration. The study recommends centralized sectoral oversight, uniform complaint-handling standards, and more explicit compensation provisions for education and health consumers.
