City park budget Rp 19b per year

JAKARTA: Head of the City Parks Agency Mauritz Napitupulu said here on Tuesday that the city administration spent Rp 19 billion each year on the maintenance of some 500 parks in the city's five mayoralties.

According to Mauritz, the money was used for, among other things, the buying of fertilizer, and paying for grass cutting and the planting of trees. The money was taken from the city administration budget.

However, he admitted that not all of the parks were well- maintained, saying that some 200 of them had been built over.

The buildings which now stood on the parks included neighborhood and community unit offices, electricity substations, security posts and kiosks.

Mauritz said that he still did not know how to resolve the problem as it required the involvement of other agencies like the mayoralty administrations and the public order agency.

"It is unlikely that these problems can be handled by the parks agency alone as we have a very limited number of employees. I hope that there will be a joint effort to resolve the problem," said Mauritz. --JP