E. Jakarta mayor to stop services to Palm Estate
JAKARTA (JP): East Jakarta Mayor Sudarsono threatened yesterday to refuse to process documents for the developer of the Palm Estate housing complex if the developer fails to show his office a building permit for the estate.
"If the developer cannot show the building permit to me this week, I will stop all the developer's services. It means that the developer will have to stop construction without delay," he said after a meeting with the city administration's officials.
"I have asked about the permit many times, but they cannot show it to me," said Sudarsono.
Many houses in Palm Estate have reportedly been built by PT Indofica Housing in Pondok Kelapa subdistrict in East Jakarta without a permit.
The housing complex is being developed on a site belonging to PD Pembangunan Sarana Jaya, a city-owned housing company, that plans to build 207 luxury houses there.
Of the 207 houses, half have already been constructed on a seven-hectare plot of land.
The developer has been warned repeatedly by the East Jakarta Mayor to stop the construction of the housing complex.
"We support the mayor's decision to stop all the developer's services if they fail to show the development permit," Djenny Suharso, a member of the City Council's Commission A in charge of government affairs.
He said that since the regulation was issued to control the building of houses, it should be consistently implemented without exception. If the city administration fails to punish delinquent developers, only the poor will be affected, he added.
"But the question is how can the city administration, particularly the City's Development Supervision Office, let the developer continue to build the housing complex if the developer does not have any building permit?" he asked. "This is not fair because if a member of the public tried to build this way the office would immediately ban the construction. So what is to be done about this developer?" he questioned.
According to an existing regulation, the city administration has the authority to demolish any house built without a permit.
On Monday, the East Jakarta Mayor threaten to tear down the houses under construction at the housing complex if PD Sarana Jaya did not prove that the governor had approved its cooperation agreement with PT Indofica Housing. Any cooperation or transfer of activity in relation to the permit must be approved by the governor in line with existing rulings.
It was reported that at first the mayoralty intended to just fine PT Indofica Housing because it failed to obtain a building permit for the construction of 25 houses.
However, later it was discovered that PD Sarana Jaya owns the 7.5 hectares of land that the houses are built on.
East Jakarta Mayor said that PD Sarana Jaya has so far failed to produce any approval notice from the governor.(31)