Councilors urge municipality to abandon bartering system
Councilors urge municipality to abandon bartering system
JAKARTA (JP): A commission of the city council has urged the
municipality to save its assets by no longer using the barter
process to get new facilities.
The head of the council's commission C for financial affairs,
Helmy AR Syihab, said that the practice should be avoided because
the municipality will eventually lose all its assets.
"The city administration tends to choose bartering to get new
facilities rather than other ways and this must be stopped once
and for all," he said.
Bartering, known as ruislag, is a type of cooperation in which
a private company provides a plot of land and builds new
facilities and in return the company gets the plot where the old
facilities stand.
Helmy said the municipality should not repeat a process such
as the Cililitan bus terminal barter project in which a private
company got the land of the terminal and in return the city got a
new bus terminal in Kampung Rambutan, East Jakarta.
He said the municipality should choose another method of
cooperation with private companies if the city budget is
inadequate to finance the development of new terminals.
"The municipality should implement the kind of cooperation
scheme that is used at the Blok M bus terminal in South Jakarta,"
he said.
At Blok M the administration implemented a build-operate-
transfer (BOT) cooperation program with a private company in
which the company built the new terminal and operates the
property located under the terminal for a given period of time.
But the administration still owns the land because all of the
property will be returned to the municipality at the end of the
contract period, he said.
Helmy said that at the Pulogadung bus terminal the
municipality should choose BOT cooperation rather than the barter
system.
"It is time to relocate the terminal and it will be wise if
the municipality prefers BOT cooperation to the barter system,"
he said.
The city administration plans to barter Pulogadung terminal
with a private company, PT Rodial Eron, to get a new terminal in
Pulogebang.
The deal was signed in 1990 but the development has been
delayed due to various problems such as the width of the new
terminal and the completion of the environment impact report.
The city land transport control agency demanded the company
provide a larger area for the new terminal because, according to
a regulation, the standard size of bus terminals should be 10
hectares.
The company rejected the demand because the agreement
stipulates that it was only required to provide 7.1 hectares of
land.
The Pulogadung bus terminal area covers 3.5 hectares of land.
The delay has caused the cost of the terminal's construction
to soar from Rp 7 billion to Rp 13 billion.
More than 1,000 city buses and 750 inter city buses use the
terminal every day. (yns)