Bylaw needed to stamp out misappropriation

JAKARTA (JP): A city councilor urged the administration on Wednesday to prepare a new bylaw on the management of the city's properties in order to help protect them from being misappropriated.

Head of Commission C for financial affairs Amarullah Asbah said that the existing legal bases for controlling the properties' management were no longer adequate to protect the properties from becoming targets for unlawful use, which usually ended up in disputes with the administration.

"As the current legal bases cover only practical things, the planned bylaw is expected not only to regulate the properties' registration but also control their usage," he said.

The bylaw was also expected to regulate the mechanism of responsibility in the properties' management, he said.

"I hope that the bylaw will help reduce the number of properties that are misappropriated," he said.

Amarullah said the bylaw should also stipulate that all city bureaucrats, ranging from subdistrict heads to the governor, must have knowledge of the properties' existence so that if something wrong occurred in their management it would be easier to search for the persons who should be held responsible.

"The current legal products, including Ministry of Home Affairs' Decree No. 32/1998, Gubernatorial Decrees No. 17/ 1982, No. 450/1996 and No. 2100/1997, do not cover such a mechanism," he said.

Head of the city supplies office Dadang Ruskandar has said that the administration was currently trying to settle disputes with private companies and groups of people over idle land owned by the city in 45 locations.

The office's data showed the city's has land in at least 12,000 separate locations throughout the capital. Combined with the buildings that stand on it, the land is projected to have a combined value of about Rp 61 trillion (US$5 billion).

Amarullah said the assets' value was probably be much higher than Rp 61 trillion as the properties' registration dated back to the period between the country's Independence Day in 1945 and last July. "For instance, the City Hall's land value is still recorded at only Rp 25 per square meter as compared to market prices of about Rp 2 million to Rp 3 million per square meter for the area.

"Under the current calculations the real value could be about three times higher," he said. (ind)