Municipality to increase low-cost apartment rentals

Municipality to increase low-cost apartment rentals

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration plans to increase the daily rentals of its low-cost apartments, an official says.

The deputy governor for economic and development affairs, TB. M. Rais, said on Wednesday that the plan is aimed at decreasing its subsidy for the apartments' operational costs.

Rais added that the municipality needs a great deal of funds to build low-cost apartments in the city.

Rais said that current rentals cannot cover the operational costs of the apartments and to do so the city administration needs additional sums of money. He said the city administration is considering the amount of the new fees because they should be viewed from various aspects.

He said it is important to set new fees which will not burden the tenants, but on the other hand help the apartments' management, city-owned housing company PD Pembangunan Sarana Jaya, in maintaining the apartments.

"Basically, we are still reviewing the new fees," he said.

The management of PD Sarana Jaya plans to increase the daily rental of nine low-cost apartment buildings managed by the company by up to 50 percent.

Currently the fees range from Rp 800 (34 U.S. cents) per day for a 14-square-meter apartment to Rp 5,000 per day for a 54- square-meter apartment.

The city administration owns nine low-cost apartment buildings throughout the city: Penjaringan Satu, Penjaringan Dua, Cengkareng, Pondok Kelapa, Cipinang, Pondok Bambu, Jatirawasari, Tambora and Karang Anyar.

The management gains Rp 1.5 billion per year from the rentals while the operational costs for the nine apartment buildings soared to Rp 2.2 billion per year.

The management reported that it gets a subsidy of Rp 600 million per year from the city administration which it uses for operational costs.

PD Sarana Jaya suspects the subsidy from the municipality could be decreased to Rp 400 million per year.

The municipality has increasingly been trying to relocate Jakartans from slum areas to low-cost apartments. For the 1996/1997 fiscal year it has allocated Rp 60.6 billion to build the apartments, an increase from Rp 20.6 billion this year.

In the next fiscal year, which will start next month, the administration plans to build seven apartment blocks in Karet Tengsin, Bulak Wadon and Tambora. The city also plans to appropriate land in Bendungan Hilir, Tanah Tinggi, Tambora, Tebet Barat and Karet Tengsin.

According to data provided by the municipality, there was 2,016 hectares of land occupied by 891,880 slum dwellers in 1993. (yns)