'Involve local administrations in land buying

'Involve local administrations in land buying

JAKARTA (JP): Local administrations should be involved in the
process to award location permits for industrial estate projects
and in private land acquisition, Vice Governor of West Java HM
Sampurna said yesterday.

Sampurna said in Bandung that many industrial estate projects
had encountered problems, including those caused by local
administrations' lack of authority to get involved.

He said the central government had issued location permits for
18,000 hectares of industrial estates in nine regencies in West
Java, including Serang, Bekasi, Tangerang, Sumedang, Bandung,
Kuningan, Purwakarta and Krawang.

"But only between 30 percent and 40 percent of the total area
has been developed," Sampurna said.

He said the development of industrial estates should be sped
up to facilitate new investment projects.

Sampurna cited land acquisition problems as the biggest
obstacles facing industrial estate developers.

"I think the procedures for land acquisition need to be
revised to make things easier for investors," he said.

Sampurna said the government might revise the sequence of
licensing procedures by issuing land acquisition permits after
location permits.

He did not rule out the possibility of collusion between
investors and land agencies' officials.

Sampurna said that problems were often complicated by brokers
or middlemen.

"However, local administrations are faced with a dilemma
because they cannot get involved in the land acquisition
process," he said, adding that land acquisition was treated
simply as a transaction between land owners and buyers.

But, he said, the local administrations were morally bound to
ensure that local people were not cheated by land buyers or
middlemen.

Sampurna cited a case in Bekasi where locals had recently sold
their land at reasonable prices to the investors in the Bekasi
Fajar industrial estate.

The locals had requested the local military command to protect
them from strong-handed middlemen who demanded to buy their land
at unusually low prices.

But thanks to intervention by the military command, the people
were paid reasonable sums for their land, a local doctor, one of
the land owners, was quoted by Antara as saying. (vin)