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.