Minister to send guilty developers to prison
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Many developers have violated a law requiring them to set aside 40 percent of the space covered by housing projects for public and social facilities such as green areas for parks.
Resettlement and Regional Infrastructure Minister Soenarno said here on Wednesday that the requirement was stipulated in Law No.4, 1992 on housing and settlement.
He warned that any developer found guilty of violating the law could be sentenced to up to ten years in jail. "I hope we can enforce the law against any violators," Soenarno told a seminar looking into the implications of flooding.
The minister said a decree he had issued this week asking the city administration to evaluate all housing projects in Greater Jakarta was aimed at uncovering developers who had violated the law.
The ministerial decree also prohibits all heads of administrations in Greater Jakarta from issuing new permits to developers.
The minister pointed out that the main requirements for developers were stipulated in article 7 of the law, which states that developers are obliged to comply with technical, ecological, and administrative requirements, to monitor the environment, and implement environmental management.
Other requirements include their obligation to allocate some 40 percent of a housing complex to public and social facilities, such as green areas for parks, schools, roads and places of worship.
Soenarno also said developers had violated not only the housing and settlement law but provisions of the Jakarta masterplan as well.
According to the minister, such violations occurred because property dealers colluded with government officials, particularly in order to obtain building permits in prohibited areas.
"Such permits could only be obtained after intensive lobbying of government officials by the property dealer," the minister said.
He gave the example of the Kapuk area in North Jakarta where, in the 1980s, there were 3,000 hectares of green area designated as water catchments, whereas by 2001 only 1,000 hectares of green area remained.
"2,000 hectares of the green areas have become housing and industrial zones," he said, referring to the Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) luxury housing complex and the numerous warehouses near the Soekarno-Hatta airport.
Head of the City Planning Agency, Setiawan Kanani, admitted that agency officials often issued permits for housing projects in prohibited areas after being pressured by their superiors and powerful businessmen.
"In the past, we were forced to issue such permits as there were instructions from our superiors," said Setiawan, without identifying individual officials.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Indonesian Real Estate Association, Yan Mogi, said that developers should not be blamed for violations of the masterplan.
Yan argued that developers constructing housing complexes did so on the basis of permits issued by the authority.
"We should not think about the process of how we obtain the permits," he said, ignoring the possibility of collusion between businessmen and government officials.
Yan, however, did say that his organization supported the government's plan to evaluate all projects in the capital, saying that the association would not protect members who were found guilty of violating the law.
Commenting on Yan's denial, chairman of the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Ahmad "Puput" Safrudin, said that developers should assume the moral responsibility for environmental problems.
"Although legally the developers did not violate any regulation, they have a moral responsibility for the damage to the environment as they build housing projects in areas which are not in line with environmental principles," he added.
The Housing and Settlement Law Article 36: (1) Anyone or any institution found intentionally violating the provisions of article 7 paragraph (1) .... can be jailed for up to 10 years and/or fined up to Rp 100 million.