Planned cemetery move meets protest
Planned cemetery move meets protest
JAKARTA (JP): A faction of the city council urged the city
administration yesterday to cancel the plan to relocate the
Sanjaya community cemetery in South Jakarta.
The spokesman of the United Development Party faction,
Muhammad Rodja, said the relocation plan, which is based on the
ruislag barter system, should be canceled because the land does
not belong to the city administration.
"It is impossible to carry out the plan because the land is
not owned by the city. Therefore, it should be canceled," Rodja
said.
The faction was commenting on results of a hearing between the
council's commission E for social welfare and the city cemetery
agency, in which the commission urged the city to speed up the
barter agreement.
The secretary of the commission, Maryam Achmad, told reporters
on Thursday that the city should quicken the relocation plan
because it has been suspended for 10 years.
Rodja said the commission has made a mistake in urging the
city to carry out the plan because the 11,793 square meters of
land on Jl. Sanjaya, now being used as a cemetery, is community
property.
"The documents from the cemetery agency show that Sanjaya
cemetery is still community property. In 1986, the late Mochtar
Zakaria, the former South Jakarta mayor, assured the people that
the city administration would not relocate the cemetery," he
said.
He explained that the cemetery was built in 1917 and has
remained unchanged until now because there is no document which
states that the city owns the land.
Rodja said that his faction will ask the council's speaker to
review city council decree No.2/1985 which approved a proposal to
change the land use from a cemetery into a residential area.
"The decree should be reviewed as an effort to protect the
cemetery," he said.
According to Rodja, the city administration signed a barter
agreement with a private developer, PT Citra Lestari Sentosa, in
1985.
The agreement stipulated that the developer can develop the
cemetery. In return, it was asked to build a junior high school
building and a street in West and Central Jakarta.
Rodja added that the faction is also protesting a policy to
relocate the city's cemeteries, especially those located on plots
of land belonging to the community.
"Cemeteries are important, because they also function as the
city's green areas," he said.
The city should have developed the cemeteries and turned them
into beautiful green areas rather than relocate them and use the
areas for apartments or real estate, Rodja said.
He said that the faction has been trying to stop the policy
"But the city administration is "too powerful". In fact, we have
been urging the administration to stop the policy in every
plenary season. But it simply ignored us and relocation
continued," he said. (yns)