House passes draft law on city changes

JAKARTA (JP): The House of Representatives approved on Thursday a draft law on Jakarta which would lead to several basic changes in the organization of the city administration.

The approval was announced by House deputy speaker Hari Sabarno after listening to final statements from the House's four factions during a plenary session.

Minister of Home Affairs Syarwan Hamid, who was present at the session, said the draft law would significantly change the organizational structure of the city administration.

The law will lead to the establishment of a mayoralty council, cut the number of deputy governors and change the administrative status of the Thousand Islands in North Jakarta, among other things.

"Based on Law No. 22/1999 on regional administration, which stipulates the governor and his deputy be appointed in one package, the city will only have one deputy governor instead of the current four," he was quoted as saying by Antara news agency.

Jakarta currently has four deputy governors who administer economic and financial affairs, development affairs, social welfare affairs and administrative affairs, respectively.

Based on the draft law, each of the city's five mayoralties would have their own legislative councils. These councils would replace the existing Lembaga Musyawarah Kota, or City Dialogue Institution.

The Thousand Islands, the popular resort islands off North Jakarta, would be upgraded to an administrative regency from a district, according to the law.

The islands would then have their own regency legislative councils, as stipulated in the draft law.

According to the draft law, mayoralty and regency legislative councils would comprise locals from political parties and nonpolitical organizations.

"Members of political parties who become mayoralty councilors are forbidden from bringing with them their parties' interests," Syarwan said.

The spokesman for the United Development Party's faction in the House, Sofwan Sahlan, and Indonesian Democratic Party faction spokesman Sajid Sutjoro hoped reducing the number of deputy governors would not cause inefficiency and ineffectiveness in the city administration.

"The control mechanisms could be weakened by ineffectiveness and inefficiency, resulting in the possibility of corruption, collusion and nepotism," Sofwan said.

The four factions in the House also urged the government to complement the improvement of the Thousand Islands' status with an improvement in the islands' facilities.

Separately, Governor Sutiyoso said at City Hall he would talk to representatives of state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina and the city mines agency about the possibility of the city administration collecting levies from the gas and oil exploration projects around the Thousand Islands.

"I promise that if we can get certain shares in the projects, the money will be used to improve the lives of the islands' residents," he said.

Natural gas and oil were earlier discovered in some 11,000 square kilometers around the Thousand Islands, particularly near Pabelokan Island. (ind)