Minister to send guilty developers to prison
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.