City hopes to speed up IMB permits
City hopes to speed up IMB permits
JAKARTA (JP): All houses built on 200 square meters of land at
the maximum will have their construction permits by January of
next year at the latest as part of a planned gradual improvement
in the issuing process, a city official said on Tuesday.
Chief of the City Planning Agency, Ahmaddin Ahmad, hoped that
the plan could be realized since, again according to the plan,
all of the local administration offices in all of the city's 42
districts already have the authority to issue the permits,
locally called IMBs.
Currently, residents applying for permits for their new and
renovated houses, including those built on 200-square-meter
sites, have to go to the city planning office in their respective
mayoralties only to spend days and sometimes months waiting, and
more often than not, having to bribe officials.
Under the new scheme, all district administration offices will
be capable of issuing the permits upon, for example, the showing
of floor plans of the structure, measuring the land and providing
blue prints, Ahmaddin said.
"The main reason for the poor public service in the case of
these permits was the limited human resources and equipment. But
starting this month, we will be able to gradually improve it as
we have now completed city planning in the districts," he added.
So far this month, 11 districts have started providing the
services with 10 more due to start next month.
By November, Ahmaddin's office hopes that the number of
districts involved will have grown to 32. The remaining 10
districts are expected to follow suit the month after.
"To determine which districts went first, we chose the most
populous districts in the capital with the best human resources,"
he explained.
The policy is one of the commitments Governor Sutiyoso made to
the City Council while delivering his revised accountability
speech last month in which he vowed to significantly improve his
performance.
The principal objective of the scheme is to help Jakartans,
particularly those in the middle and lower economic brackets, to
obtain building permits.
The new policy also offers speedy processing. Applicants with
all of the required documents are expected to receive their IMBs
within nine days, instead of the current long-drawn-out wait of
24 days.
"The applicant should submit the application form along with
copies of his identification card, land ownership certificate and
property tax receipts," Ahmaddin said.
Based on Gubernatorial Decree No. 63/2000 on IMB charges, the
fee that should be paid by applicants is set at Rp 400 per square
meter for houses of less than 100 square meters in size, Rp 3,000
for houses less than 200 square meters, and Rp 5,000 for bigger
buildings, he explained.
"Anyone who runs into problems with the fee or waiting time
should file a complaint with the local district head, who will
then forward the complaint to us," Ahmaddin added.
The permits are needed to ensure houses are built according to
the guidelines set out in the city plan. Frequently, the
stipulated minimum distance from the front wall of a house to the
street is not complied with.
After being in effect for three weeks this month, some still
consider that the scheme is still hampered by a lack of
preparation both on the part of officials and that of residents.
"However, there have been some improvements because out of the
135 applicants, 93 of them had their IMBs issued within nine
days. While the rest of them are still in process," Ahmaddin
said.
For houses built on larger sites, the construction permit will
still be issued by the city planning agency at the mayoralty
level. (dja)