Infrastructure blocked by low land compensation

Infrastructure blocked by low land compensation

JAKARTA (JP): Vital infrastructure in Greater Jakarta will
remain unrealized as long as inhabitants are not paid enough
compensation to give up their land.

Meanwhile, the projects -- worth over US$100 billion -- become
more expensive with each year of delay.

Flood control and waste management facilities, for instance,
"might never be realized", given the strong resistance to land
conversion, a participant of a seminar on Greater Jakarta said
yesterday.

Scott Guggenheim, an anthropologist from the World Bank's
Jakarta office, was elaborating on the recommendations of the
seminar's working group on social aspects.

"But some public enterprises, like state-owned electricity
company PLN, are beginning to pay market rates" in land
acquisition, therefore preventing unnecessary delay, he said.

Earlier in the seminar, legal expert Koesnadi Hardjasoemantri
said the right to be paid market rates is actually inferred to in
a 1993 presidential decree on land acquisition for public
interest.

The three-day seminar was closed yesterday by Budhy Tjahjati
S. Soegijoko from the National Development Planning Coordinating
Board. The planning board, together with the World Bank and the
Ministry of Public Works, organized the talks on "Strategies for
a sustainable Greater Jabotabek (Jakarta, Bogor, Tangerang and
Bekasi)".

Other participants of the group on social aspects for
sustainable urban growth were health expert and legislator
Nafsiah Mboi, anthropologist Parsudi Suparlan, and Adi Sasono of
the Center for Information and Development Studies.

Guggenheim said the urgent need to overcome land insecurity
was one of the group's main recommendations.

The lack of security among residents, who feel there is no way
they can own or live on a plot for an adequate period, leads to
strong resistance to land acquisition for public interest.

Public works officials frequently say land appropriation is
the major obstacle to the completion of the Banjir Kanal flood
control project, which began decades ago.

Another recommendation was decentralization, to enable more
empowerment of communities.

The frequent complaint of poor coordination arises because
everything here seems to need permission from above, Guggenheim
noted.

The government, he said, needs to differentiate its
involvement on higher levels and what can be done without it on
lower levels.

"A top-down approach was tolerable in the first 20 years of
Indonesia's independence," Guggenheim said, but it is no longer
efficient. "People don't want to maintain roads that they don't
need."

Nafsiah said the paternalism behind such an approach, "or the
feeling that `I know better what is good for you'" is worsened,
as it is shared by academics as well as officials.

Much simpler regulations was another recommendation, related
to the need for better public transportation and transparency in
land titles. Bribery is encouraged by confusion of different
rules, with a total of 2,000 rules on land issues, Guggenheim
said.

Budhy Tjahjati said Greater Jakarta must continue to learn
from other experiences of wide community participation such as
those of Curitiba in Brazil. (anr)