More low-cost apartments to be built

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.