Flood Canal development likely delayed
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Development of the Eastern Flood Canal, which was scheduled to start on June 22 in conjunction with the city's 475th anniversary, will likely be postponed, as the central government had not yet confirmed whether it will provide its financial share of the project.
Five days before the scheduled commencement date, the city administration was still unclear about how much the central government would provide this year to finance the project, head of the city public works agency IGKG Suena told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The project will cost about Rp 4.4 trillion (US$504 million), of which 90 percent, or about Rp 3.96 trillion, will be met by the central government and the rest by the administration.
"Although we may inaugurate the project on June 22, we are still uncertain about the amount of money that will be disbursed by the central government this year," he said.
Suena said that as it did not know yet how much the central government would give this year, the agency was unable to decide yet whether to start the development or not.
"It's unlikely that the administration will cover all this year's expenditure for the project," he said.
He added that the administration had allocated Rp 22 billion for land acquisition and construction works this year.
So far only about 15 hectares of a total of 250 hectares of land needed for the project have been cleared. Suena noted that the administration had planned to complete the land acquisition process within two years, while the project would be completed within five.
The Rp 4.4 trillion for the canal project will be used for both land clearance and construction, said Suena, adding that the funds for land acquisition had swollen from Rp 1.3 trillion to Rp 2 trillion.
According to Suena, the price of taxed property (NJOP), could no longer be used as the standard for acquiring land as in some places the price was far higher than the NJOP price.
The Eastern Flood Canal is part of the government's comprehensive plan to resolve the capital's annual flooding problems, with projects worth a total of about Rp 20 trillion to be implemented within 10 years.
Other projects to tackle flooding include dredging 13 rivers in the city, evicting riverside squatters and the construction of about 30,000 dwellings to accommodate evicted squatters.
The East Flood Canal, together with the existing Western Flood Canal, will create a semicircular canal along the northern part of the city that will take the water from 13 rivers in the capital before emptying into the Java Sea off North Jakarta.
The 14-kilometer West Flood Canal was constructed in 1924 by the Dutch colonial government, but it needs to be upgraded as it has become silted up.