Batam bridges lay dormant
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.