Kedungombo people win 4-year legal battle

Kedungombo people win 4-year legal battle

JAKARTA (JP): Residents of Kedungombo, Boyolali, Central Java,
won their legal battle against the government over property they
were forced to surrender to make way for a multi-million dollar
reservoir project.

Lawyers defending the farmers said the Supreme Court has ruled
that the government pay Rp 50,000 (about US$23) for each square
meter of the farmers' land in Kemusu village and another Rp 2
billion for "non-material losses", including their feeling of
insecurity after they lost their homes.

Chief Justice Purwoto Gandasubrata told reporters yesterday
that the "spirit of the verdict" was the government must treat
the displaced residents fairly.

The World Bank, which funded the project, had requested that
project officials allocate a certain amount of the total budget
to compensate the residents' property loss, Purwoto said.

"Such a requirement is also attached to any project that the
bank funds, not only to the Kedung Ombo, but also, for example,
the Mrica dam," Purwoto said.

Conflict

The dam, which was constructed with a soft loan of US$166
million from the World Bank, covers an area of over 6,700
hectares in the three regencies of Grobogan, Sragen and Boyolali.
Thousands of hectares of land and houses were flooded in 1989
despite the unsettled dispute.

The Kedung Ombo conflict became an international issue when
local non-governmental organizations sent an official letter of
complaint to the now-defunct International NGO Forum on
Indonesia. They accused the government of ignoring the
environmental and social aspects of the dam project.

The lawyers, from the Semarang chapter of the Indonesian Legal
Institute (YLBHI), told The Jakarta Post by telephone that the
Supreme Court also ordered the government to compensate the
villagers for destroyed crops.

" The government must pay Rp 30,000 per square meter of land
on which farmers had trees or crops," said YLBHI spokesman Mas
Achmad Santosa.

He said the government, in this case the Central Java governor
and the Ministry of Public Works, were also required to pay Rp
24,000 in trial fees.

Achmad said farmers from Nglanji village, now at the bottom of
the reservoir, had to wait four years before they heard the
consoling decision from the Supreme Court.

The villagers initially lost their legal battle against the
Central Java administration and the Ministry of Public Works when
their law suit was turned down by the Semarang district court and
then a higher court in 1990 and 1991 respectively.

They sued the government because it had forced them to
surrender their homes for only Rp 500 to Rp 800 per square meter
of land with all the crops on it.

Purwoto criticized the current practice in which project
officials consign money earmarked for compensation to the
displaced people to court before the dispute over land
acquisition is settled. This happened in the Kedungombo case.

"Such a practice is not good. Instead, the involved parties
should sit and talk to resolve the conflict," Purwoto told
journalists after installing two senior officials in his office.
(rms/prs)