More low-cost apartments to be built
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The city administration is planning to require developers that have not fulfilled their obligations to construct public and social facilities to build low-cost apartments for the poor instead.
"We will invite them (the developers) to fulfill their obligations by taking part in developing low-cost apartments," Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso told reporters at City Hall on the sidelines of a meeting with the House of Representatives' Commission V overseeing development affairs on Thursday.
The commission paid the city administration a visit to discuss the development of low-cost apartments for poor residents in the capital.
Sutiyoso said many developers had not met their obligations to build infrastructure and facilities for the public and for non- commercial purposes.
Without detailing the number of indebted developers, City Secretary Ritola Tasmaya confirmed Sutiyoso's statement.
"We already have a list of developers who have yet to render facilities for public and social purposes to the administration," he said.
He acknowledged that in the past the administration failed to take stern action against developers who failed to fulfill their obligations.
"We will expedite the process of submission. And, instead of building public facilities, we will ask them to build apartments. We will provide site plans and they (the developers) will have to construct apartments," he said.
According to Ministerial Decree No. 1/1987 issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, developers have to build infrastructure and facilities for public and social purposes whenever a housing complex is developed.
Those facilities include schools, sports centers, places of worship, markets, parks and playgrounds. Such facilities cannot be converted into building premises for commercial purposes and have to be handed over to the local administration within five years.
The city administration has repeatedly said that developers were not fulfilling their obligations and that they were converting sites for public facilities into commercial premises.
Some developers, however, have said that they could not build the facilities because of red tape and illegal fees charged by corrupt city officials. They also charged that the Jakarta administration did not properly maintain the public facilities that had been already handed over to them.
Sutiyoso's administration plans to develop a total of 71,000 low-cost apartments by 2010.
During Thursday's meeting, legislator Enggartiasto Lukito said that his commission would help convey the City administration's desire to build more apartments to State Minister for Public Housing M. Yusuf Anshari.
"We will try to include fund allocations for the development of low-cost apartments in Jakarta in our deliberations ... The administration, however, should first lodge its proposal with the commission," he said.
Separately, City Housing Agency head Deddy Tisnamiharja said his agency planned to build 2,040 apartments in three locations across the city next year.
"We are ready to build the apartments as we have already acquired the land in three locations," he said.
Those locations are in Rawa Bebek subdistrict, Pulogebang in East Jakarta, Marunda subdistrict, Cilincing district in North Jakarta, and Karet Tengsin subdistrict in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta.