City Neon's building to be forcibly demolished soon

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration has announced that it will forcibly demolish an exhibition building owned by private firm PT City Neon Prima Mandiri in the Bung Karno sports complex for violating its building permit.

The city's Development Monitoring Agency head Djumhana Tj. said the administration gave a deadline of Tuesday as the company was still staging a furniture fair which would end on Monday.

"We will forcibly demolish the building if the firm refuses to demolish the building itself," Djumhana told reporters over the weekend.

Asked about the company's plan to seek a delay the building was to have been used to stage an exhibition on regional autonomy in October, he said the exhibition should be moved to another venue.

He insisted that the city would no longer tolerate the existence of the building, saying the demolition should actually have been conducted last week.

"We will not set a new deadline for the demolition. The building should be demolished next week," he remarked over the weekend.

He said that he had ordered the Central Jakarta Mayoralty's development monitoring office to conduct the demolition.

There are two exhibition buildings which the city administration considers illegal in the eastern parking lot of the sports complex. The other one is owned by PT Anggara Ind.

The administration has started the demolition of PT Anggara's building.

Some councillors on the council's Commission B for economic affairs had earlier criticized the administration for only demolishing Anggara's building.

They regretted the demolition since the buildings were actually used by small and medium-size companies to promote their products at lower cost.

They were of the view that the administration was reluctant to demolish PT City Neon's building because it was owned by a large company.

PT Anggara reportedly suffered a loss of Rp 5 billion (US$555,555) because of the demolition.

When the demolition of Anggara's building started, some officials of the Central Jakarta mayoralty were seen having lunch with executives of City Neon in the nearby Pondok Laguna sea food restaurant.

The Central Jakarta development monitoring office head M. Gunarwan said the lunch has nothing to do with the demolition.

"Why did you report that my staff were having lunch with the company officials. Do you want to fight with us," Djumhana said emotionally.

However, city officials regretted that certain councillors were trying to protect PT Anggara even though its building violated a city bylaw.

"They just using the name of the small traders for their own benefit," an officials said.

City bylaw No. 6/1999 on zoning stipulates that the sports stadium area in Senayan, Central Jakarta, should only be used for sporting activities. (jun)