Indonesians need 1.9m houses

Indonesians need 1.9m houses

MATARAM, West Nusa Tenggara: Indonesia on average needs 1.9
million new houses annually, the third assistant to the state
minister of housing and settlement, Guntur Hutapea, has said.

"The government can provide only 15 percent of the figure and
the community has to be responsible for the remaining 85
percent," he announced here Wednesday after opening an all-
Mataram municipality workshop on the management of group-based
housing construction (P2BPK).

He was quoted by Antara wire service as saying that to speed
up the construction of houses in the country, 130 P2BPK groups
had been established in 20 of Indonesia's 27 provinces.

Three of these P2BPK groups are found here, each having 25 to
40 members, he said.

"These groups allow people in the low-income bracket to obtain
housing loans from banks," he said, adding that each member is
eligible for a loan to pay for a very cheap home.

"It is expected that these groups will have been established
in all 27 provinces by the end of the Sixth Five-Year Development
Plan in 1999 to ensure that people in the low-income bracket are
able to build their own houses," he added.