'City govt lacks ability to run the capital'

The Jakarta administration was only able to spend some 60 percent of the Rp 2.24 trillion (US$263 million) earmarked in the 2003 city budget for development projects. Officials claimed there had been various constraints to meeting the targets, including delayed starts to projects and changes in the budget structure. The Jakarta Post talked to some people on the matter.

Uli Parulian Sihombing, 30, is a public lawyer with the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta). He is single and lives in South Bekasi, north of Jakarta:

The meager spending of the development budget indicates that the city administration lacks the sufficient managerial capacity to run the capital. This has been going on in the last couple of years and, as a result, we have, among other problems, poor-quality health care and shabby public transportation facilities.

Instead of spending the budget to increase the citizens' quality of life, the administration has earmarked a great amount of funds to suppress them, by evicting sidewalk vendors and shanty-town residents, for instance.

Windra, 31, is a sound engineer for a post-production house. He lives in Petamburan, West Jakarta:

I think the administration was only able to spend so little because its projects are only implemented to swell the officials' pockets.

The administration builds this capital not in a conceptualized way, not from A, B, C, to Z. Every time the head of a certain department changes, the program changes too.

Priorities in development definitely should be transportation and flood control, and should not focus on beautifying the capital. Making the streets comfortable and effective for the citizens should be enough for now.

I studied architecture, so I know how hard it is to make a working spatial plan. I think they should form an agency mostly comprised of engineers, who are in charge of designing this city -- but not based on their, or officials', personal interests.

--The Jakarta Post