Many buildings badly maintained

JAKARTA: About 40 percent of the 846 high-rise buildings in the capital are not well maintained, causing discomfort for their tenants, the Indonesian Association of Building Maintenance (APBI) said on Monday.

Head of the association, Dharma Sjachrial Pohan, said that the building owners -- both government and private sector -- did not have sufficient funds to maintain the buildings properly.

The situation was made worse due to low occupancy rates, which are only 40 percent to 50 percent on average, while ideally, they should be higher than 60 percent.

He said that the association and the city administration were drafting legislation on the standardization of building maintenance. --Antara