Minister blames poor laws for derelict land

JAKARTA (JP): Inadequate laws limiting land ownership is a major reason for the escalating amount of derelict land in Greater Jakarta, according to State Minister of Agrarian Affairs Soni Harsono.

The 1970 decree on land ownership limitations was no longer effective, mainly because it did not specify how much land could be owned by companies, Soni told a seminar on coast reclamation and its environmental impact here yesterday.

The minister said that the 1970 decree issued by the minister of home affairs only restricted people to owning five plots based on the number of land titles issued.

In reality, he said, many people and companies in Jakarta owned more than five plots.

"After buying the land, the owners do nothing on the plots and leave them as they are without intending to develop them," Soni said.

The decree also cannot prevent the activities of land speculators and control the quickening rise of land prices.

This means the growing amount of neglected land has become one of the main reasons why there has been a rapid reduction of available land in the city.

"Neglected land contributes nothing to people's welfare because it has no social function at all," Soni said.

Every inch of land, no matter who owned it, should have a social function, such as in the form of public facilities, he said.

"There should be tighter controls over giving land acquisition permits and monitoring the system to prevent people from neglecting land and causing public uproar," Soni said.

Analysis

According to property analyst Panangian Simanungkalit, the growing amount of derelict land in the city, which totals about 33,000 hectares, is due to the government's poor law enforcement.

Speaking with The Jakarta Post yesterday, the chairman of the Center for Indonesian Property Study said the land was abandoned because many, mostly large-scale, developers had greedily bought more plots than they could develop.

Developers in Jakarta, he said, had a capacity to build about 60,000 houses a year which means they would require 15,000 hectares of land.

"But, they cleared about 48,000 hectares, or 33,000 hectares more than was needed," Panangian said.

He said that developers had already secured land acquisition permits for about 121,000 hectares in Greater Jakarta.

"The amount of cleared land would increase even further if the government granted more land acquisition permits," Panangian said.

If the amount of abandoned land continued to grow, prices of both houses and land in the city would rise accordingly, he said. (ste)