City wants land details of Manggarai project

JAKARTA (JP): Deputy Governor of Economic and Development Affairs Tb.M. Rais has urged the consortium building the Manggarai integrated terminal to immediately present details of the amount of land it will need to the City Administration.

"Detailed land information is very important because the data will enable the administration to pass it on to the people in the area. They are worried whether they will be affected by the project," Rais said yesterday.

Publicizing the project's land requirements to local residents should be carried out before the US$285 million construction project started, he said.

Rais was responding to Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto's remarks last week, saying that the project was scheduled to start in December.

Haryanto said the project would affect only a limited number of houses that impinged on the planned elevated roads.

The affected houses mostly belong to employees of the state- owned railway company, Perumka, he said.

Perumka is one of several state firms supervised by Haryanto's ministry.

According to Rais, the administration has no objections to the Manggarai project.

But the administration badly needed detailed information of the land to be used.

"Residents won't be surprised over land appropriation if we publicize the project as early as possible," Rais said.

The Manggarai integrated terminal project will change the old terminal in South Jakarta into a four-story station with 22 tracks, four for underground express trains, and facilities for intercity buses, minibuses and taxis. It will be surrounded by a commercial center and apartments.

The terminal project was submitted to President Soeharto in 1994 by the head of the project's consortium, Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, Soeharto's eldest daughter.

Officials believe the project will need 124 hectares and estimate it will affect at least 4,000 residents currently living in the neighborhood.

Concern

Councilors have already raised concern over the lack of coordination between the administration and the consortium in developing the terminal.

They said recently that coordination was necessary to prepare the city for any problems that might arise, such as protests over land appropriation or compensation.

Despite being excluded from the city's new revised spatial plan for 1997-2010, the administration is to allow the consortium to start the project in December.

"It's possible because the revision of the urban spatial plan has yet to be completed," Rais said.

The current spatial plans designated Manggarai a bus terminal, a train station and residential site.

The draft of the new spatial plans was presented to Governor Surjadi Soedirdja and other city officials in May.

Another project which was not included in the plans was the three-tier transit system. The system is also scheduled to start construction in December.

However, two other megaprojects, the US$2.3 billion subway and the reclamation of the Jakarta Bay, were in the revised plans.

They will need approval from the governor, the City Council's Speaker and the minister of home affairs before it is officially used as the guidance for Jakarta's development. (ste/07)