New regulation on land use permits introduced

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration will now issue land use permits only after developers inform related institutions of the exact location for the establishment of the required social and public facilities.

Deputy Governor for Economic and Development Affairs TB Rais said yesterday that the new regulation for the issuance of land use documents is designed to motivate the concerned institutions to demand that developers fulfill their commitment to build and hand over public facilities to the authorities.

By law, a property developer is obliged to hand over the roads, gutters, school buildings, parks and worship places built in their housing complexes to the city authorities after a certain period of time.

"Before the issuance of the permits, representatives of concerned institutions, such as the offices of recreational parks and of education, will be invited to a meeting to have a look at the planned locations for the facilities to be built by the developers," he said.

During those meetings, the officials from the related technical institutions are expected to fully understand the location of the facilities to be given to the authorities, Rais said.

"Thus, they are also responsible for securing the city's assets," he said. "The authorities will not hesitate to continuously pressure developers which have already obtained permits but fail to fulfill their commitments."

According to Rais, a number of property developers are still facing certain "problems" in handing over the facilities to the city authorities even though they are ready to do so.

One developer, for example, had to temporarily postpone the construction of a school in their property area due to the limited number of students, he said.

Rais vowed to prevent the plots of land designated by the developers for public facilities from being seized by third parties.

He also disclosed that there are still a number of developers, who refuse to hand over their public facilities to the authorities.

Area of land

He said that the area of land for the establishment of the facilities, which have not yet been handed over to the authorities, reached a total of 1,845 hectares. The plots in question are estimated to be worth about Rp 3.6 trillion (US$1.65 billion) under the current land price of Rp 200,000 per square meter.

Governor Surjadi Soedirdja said recently that the city administration has received social and public facilities built on a total area of only 178 hectares.

The governor said that his office will carry out an in-depth investigation of the 536 land use documents, which have been issued since 1971.

Surjadi said that the 536 documents involve projects that should have social and public facilities on a total of 2,023 hectares. (bsr)