6,000-hectare waterfront city to be built, governor says

JAKARTA (JP): Governor Surjadi Soedirdja has that the city administration will reclaim 6,000 hectares of the Jakarta Bay in order to turn the capital's northern coastal zone into a modern waterfront area.

"The land for development is getting harder to obtain whereas the need for a larger port, better housing and recreation centers is increasing," Surjadi said.

Speaking to dozens of Dutch businessmen at a luncheon hosted by the Indonesia Netherlands Association (INA) at a hotel in Central Jakarta on Wednesday, Surjadi said that the sister-city relationship between Jakarta and the Netherlands' city of Rotterdam inspired Jakarta to reclaim the 6,000-hectare area.

"Let's hope you have enough money to finance this project," Surjadi said, referring to the expertise in reclamation projects of Dutch engineers.

A number of prominent people, including the Netherlands ambassador to Indonesia, Jan Herman R.D. van Roijen, and INA chairman Frans Seda attended the luncheon.

INA, which was established in 1978 by a group of Indonesian and Dutch businessmen to promote business relations between communities in their two countries, has its head office in Jakarta and branches in Surabaya, East Java, and the Hague, the Netherlands.

Surjadi said that feasibility studies for the reclamation project, which will include Ancol and Kapuk, are still being made by the city administration.

"We also plan to build a water sport recreation facility but its acreage will be larger than that of the Gelora Senayan," he said, adding that the development of the project would not damage the ecological balance in the area.

A Sydney-based urban planning firm, the Planning Workshop International (PWI), had earlier proposed that the Jakarta administration turn the northern coastal area into a waterfront city to cope with limited space in the capital.

The Jakarta administration has since then worked together with PWI, which designed the development of Darling harbor in New South Wales, Australia, and revitalized the Kuching waterfront in Malaysia, to draw up a blueprint for the waterfront project.

Rotterdam

In a related development, Surjadi praised the progress of the sister city relationship between Rotterdam and Jakarta.

"Compared with those of other cities, the mayor of Rotterdam, Bram Peper, is one of the most frequent visitors to Indonesia," he said.

The Indonesian government currently has a trade center in Rotterdam, which is viewed as a gateway to the European market, with the objective of informing European buyers about goods from Indonesia.

Surjadi also took the opportunity to brief Dutch businessmen about Jakarta, including its superb 8.2 percent annual economic growth and the serious impact of urbanization.

He said that despite the tremendous annual growth, Jakarta with its 8.5 million population also faces serious social ills, such as poor public transportation, improper housing and unemployment.

Environmentalists, however, have pointed out that the reclamation will not only affect marine life but will also shift current wave movement, sedimentation patterns and other aspects of the complex coastal water system.

The destruction of mangrove forests along the coastal area will also worsen sea water intrusion, which has reached the Monas area in Central Jakarta. (09)