Surjadi to continue his tough policies next year
Surjadi to continue his tough policies next year
JAKARTA (JP): Governor Surjadi Soedirdja vowed to continue his
policies and implement all regulations consistently.
Speaking at his year-end media conference over the weekend,
Surjadi said that there will be no major changes in 1996; he will
maintain his current policies.
Surjadi also pledged to have all violators, including those
found breaking environmental regulations, punished.
He cited the clean river program as an effort to save the
environment, despite the protests of those evicted from
riverbanks.
He admitted that some of his subordinates had failed to inform
the squatters about the administration's effort to conserve the
environment. This led to misunderstandings.
"Don't brand the administration as inhuman when we have to
dismantle the squatters' shanties along the riverbanks," he said.
Surjadi urged district and subdistrict heads to take deal
promptly with irregularities in their areas.
A subdistrict head, he said, should know the condition of his
subdistrict and act quickly when there is, for example, a new
shanty standing on a riverbank.
"Please, tear it down soon. Don't wait until other shanties
are built in the location. I will not hesitate to take action
against any stupid subordinates who respond to irregularities too
slowly," Surjadi said.
The city administration intensified its clean river program
last year by, among others, demolishing illegal shanties on
riverbanks.
Many people saw the demolition, colored by clashes between the
shanty owners and the authorities, as disputatious.
The governor also said he will continue his effort to improve
city services because their sorry state has hampered investment
in Jakarta.
City Council
In a related development, City Council Speaker M.H. Ritonga
said at his annual press conference over the weekend that the
council was getting better at its role as a partner of the
administration.
Ritonga cited the council's active involvement in both
producing and proposing provincial decrees.
He said that in 1995 the city council pushed 11 bills through
to provincial regulation. "One of them, which was purely the
council's initiative, was the decree on the land reclamation
project," Ritonga said.
He denied that the city council was a pack of rubber-stamp
yes-men for the administration. "That is completely wrong," he
said.
He said such an opinion was caused by the inferiority of the
councilors. (yns)