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)