'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)