Batam bridges lay dormant
Fadli, The Jakarta Post, Batam
The central government has built six bridges connecting Batam with a group of neighbouring islands --Tonton, Nipah, Setoko, Rempang, Galang and New Galang-- at a cost of at least Rp 256 billion, but the mega project has now ground to a halt as the bridges, built using the latest technology between 1993 and 1998, have failed to attract any foreign or domestic investors to the islands.
The 642-meter Tengku Fisabillilah bridge connecting Batam and Tonton is often visited by young couples at weekends and by elderly Malays who come to pay homage to the respected Malay figure who gives the bridge its name, while the 420-meter span linking Tonton and Nipah has become a weekend fishing spot for locals.
The other four bridges remain unused, as the islands they are connected to are uninhabited, including the deserted Galang.
Galang was abandoned in 1996 when the Vietnamese asylum seekers who had been allowed to temporarily occupy the island were repatriated or sent to third countries.
The construction of the bridges was part of the former New Order regime's policy to make the Riau archipelago, bordering Singapore and Malaysia, an industrial-bonded zone.
"The bridges were built to encourage more foreign investors to invest on the six islands, because Batam has its own means of accommodating investors. And only a small number of foreign tourists had visited the islands.
"The possibility that no businesses would invest on the other islands was really not considered in the original plans," Fatullah, spokesman for the Batam Industrial Development Authority (BIDA), told The Jakarta Post here recently.
The project was actually the brainchild of former president B.J. Habibie who, in his capacity as minister of research and technology, was given authority under Presidential Decree No. 28/1992 to supervise Batam's industrial development.
Besides the high-cost bridges, Habibie also ordered the development of an international airport, Hang Nadim, to allow wide-body cargo and passenger aircraft to land on the island, and the provision of incentives for foreign investors and of numerous facilities for domestic businessmen.
Fatullah conceded that development on Batam and the other islands had not been as rapid as first hoped, and that the industrial and tourism infrastructure introduced to the islands had caused problems for locals.
Many groups have expressed dissatisfaction with the development programs in the industrial and tourism fields in the region as they have caused socioeconomic problems for locals and those migrating to the region.
Johnson Napitupulu, a former BIDA official, said that after a decade of industrial and tourism development under the Sijori (Singapore, Johor (Malaysia) and Indonesia) Triangle Area, the Riau archipelago was now facing a great number of social problems.
In the environmental sphere for example, he said that the Riau archipelago had become a dump site for Singapore's garbage and waste water and that several islands were threatening to sink below the surface as their sand had been excavated to assist in Singapore's reclamation project.
"The island is crowded with Malaysian and Singaporean tourists on the weekends (who come here) to gamble and to meet their Indonesian second wives," he said, adding that Batam had the country's highest incidence of HIV/AIDS and that the trafficking of women and children on the island was rife, caused by the serious unemployment problem in the country.
Johnson also said that migrants from other parts of Indonesia were attracted to Batam like bees to a honey pot, having found it difficult to find work in their home towns in Sumatra, Java, West and East Nusa Tenggara.
"The presence of tens of thousands of job seekers and hoodlums has contributed to the frequent ethnic riots on the island over the last three years and this has been a particular problem for the Malay locals," he said as quoted by Antara news agency.