City gets no benefit from islands

JAKARTA: At least 34 islands of the Kepulauan Seribu (Thousand Islands) group located off the north coast of Jakarta are still private property, as the owners, who have been licensed to manage them, have not opened them to the public.

Head of the Kepulauan Seribu Regency Planning Board Mara Oloan Siregar said during a discussion here that the city administration had allowed the private sector to manage 45 out of 110 islands in the Thousands Islands for tourism, but only 11 of them were open to the public, Antara reported.

The management of the private islands had violated Bylaw No. 11/1992 on land use in the island group, which stipulated that private sector management should provide 40 percent of the land for public facilities, said Siregar.

She said that the city administration had enjoyed benefits from taxes levied on hotels and restaurants on the 11 public islands, while the other islands had not benefited either the people or the administration.

Owners of the private islands include relatives of former president Soeharto and conglomerators like Pontjo Sutowo.

Rini Raksadjaya of the Research Center for Tourism at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) said the administration should review the licenses for owners of the other 36 islands and impose huge taxes on them.--JP