Managing Jakarta

Managing Jakarta

It has been a long time since the former state minister of the
environment, Emil Salim, has publicly discussed subjects that
interest us all. So it is all the more gratifying to find that,
at a monthly lecture at Jakarta's City Hall, he showed that he
had lost none of his acute understanding of the problems
confronting us in these critical times.

Emil Salim told the City Hall employees at the meeting that
Jakarta and the surrounding areas of Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi
need one governor with ministerial-level authority to face future
challenges. Only then would the city be able to properly manage
the problems facing it. In the years to come, ex-minister Salim
said, Jakarta will play an increasing role as an international
growth center in one of the world's most dynamic regions:
Southeast Asia.

Of course we all know the magnitude of the problems which
Jakarta must confront now and in the future. But in almost two
decades, Jakarta will become one of the world's "megacities" with
an estimated population of more than 21 million. If things do not
change by the 21st century, ex-minister Salim warned, we can
expect more complications in one of the world's 10 megacities.

Of all the areas of Indonesia, Jakarta, according to Emil
Salim, is the most important in terms of higher-level management.
The city's population growth, which averages 4 percent a year, is
higher than the national average. The city's demographic makeup
is the worst in the country in terms of distribution of wealth,
which leads to an ever increasing crime rate and other social
problems, of which the July 27th riots could be an example.

Jakarta's growing traffic congestion needs no further comment
except that, as ex-minister Salim said, this and other
shortcomings are always blamed on the city administration "while
the source of the problems actually comes from higher
authorities". It has, for example, been a longstanding complaint
of the city authorities that little can be done to improve the
city's public bus system as long as the final authority over key
elements lies elsewhere. The PPD bus company, which is controlled
by the Ministry of Transportation, is an example.

Other examples easily come to mind. To maintain an adequate
standard of livability, for example, Jakarta needs ample supplies
of clean water. The city's water catchment areas, however, lie
outside city boundaries, in the province of West Java, where they
are threatened by the unregulated construction of villas and
housing estates. Many steps have been announced, including a
presidential instruction, to control this haphazard development.
There have been few results.

Clearly, something must be done to reduce, if not eliminate,
these problems if Jakarta is to function properly as the national
capital of Southeast Asia's largest and most populous country --
not to mention to fulfill its role as an increasingly important
regional growth center. We do not know what difficulties will
stop ex-minister Salim's suggestion becoming a reality. But the
essence of his proposition is clear: It is crucial that Jakarta
be placed under a level of management that can make integrated
solutions to its most pressing problems. This, surely, is a
proposition which most of us agree with. We hope the necessary
steps in that direction can be made before the complications
become too great to be unraveled.