E. Jakarta mayor to stop services to Palm Estate

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)