Welfare of people in new regency of Thousand Islands should come first

Benget Simbolon Tnb., The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Jakarta city administration inaugurated Kepulauan Seribu (Thousand Islands) off the North Jakarta coast as a new regency in November, but many problems have still been left unsolved.

The 69,976-square-kilometer mini archipelago has great potential in terms of tourism and marine-based industries. But its basic infrastructure is very poor.

Most residents of the 110 islands only enjoy electricity for 12 hours a day, often less or none at all depending on the particular island. And recently, for about three weeks, the islands were hit by a total blackout due to technical problems with the electric supply.

The islands are heavily dependent on sea transportation. But the new regency does not yet have anything resembling a reliable transportation system. As a result, residents cannot easily and comfortably travel to Jakarta or to other islands in the area unless they own a reliable seagoing vessel.

In terms of public facilities, the new regency, which is home to about 17,000 residents, has only one Puskesmas or public health center, four elementary schools, one junior high school and one high school. As a regency it should have more public facilities.

Residents in the area often find it very difficult to readily access clean water and are usually required to gather rainwater by crude catchment systems built around their homes.

The new regency is also facing serious environmental problems. The most striking of which is the shrinkage or in many cases complete submersion of many islets due to the destruction of their protective coral reefs. It is estimated that some 70 percent of the islands are surrounded by reef. Other threats are abrasion and over-exploitation of sand.

Several islands, including Umbi Besar, Umbi Kecil, Air Kecil, Air Sedang, Nyamuk Besar, Dapur, Van der Smith and Jong, have been sinking due to serious abrasion and environmental destruction.

A number of islands have been literally shrinking into oblivion. One, the historically valuable Onrust island home to an old Dutch fortress, was reported to have shrunken from 12 hectares to nine in recent years.

At present there are 110 islands left in the group. If the administration does not pay serious attention to this environmental degradation then more islands will disappear in the future.

The damage to the coral reefs is caused by the practices employed by certain fishermen in which explosives are used to the blow up the reef, and kill as many fish as possible to sell at the market place. In the process they kill thousands of other living organisms as well as the reef itself. Another reef killer is unregulated poaching of the aesthetically pleasing coral which is also sold. Rampant illegal mining of sand and global warming are also factors in island destruction.

Environmental problems on the islands may worsen if the government does not take the necessary steps to deal with them. Trash problems, for example, which are still an unresolved dilemma there, may worsen in the near future. People inside and outside of the islands should not be allowed to simply throw their trash -- especially toxins and plastics -- into the sea because it will destroy all of the sea life that remains eventually.

The private ownership of some of the islands has also contributed to some basic social problems in the island group. Some 44 of the 110 islands are privately owned by wealthy individuals, including Probosutedjo, the half-brother of former president Soeharto and several of Soeharto's children -- Bambang Trihatmodjo and Siti Hardiyanti "Tutut" Rukmana -- Ponco Sutowo, Tommy Winata, Ciputra and Surya Paloh.

Most of the islands have been developed into holiday resorts, but only for the benefit of the owners and not for the interest of the general public, particularly the locals.

The owners reportedly use the islands at their will and manage them as if there are no other residents in the area. Worse still, some of them have treated the local residents like criminals. Whenever the local residents have to land on one of the private islands -- for example when their boats develop engine trouble -- the owners have often shot firearms at the wayward boaters to scare them off.

The City Administration has been called on by many groups to recover its authority over the islands and to utilize them for the benefit of the general public, particularly the residents of the islands.

The islands' 17,891 residents are mostly impoverished elementary school graduates who earn their living as fishermen. If the authorities do not pay special attention to their conditions then they will remain marginalized when, or shall we say if, the city launches an improvement program there.

Indeed there are so many serious problems facing the new regency, and yet there has been no indication whether the government will address them quickly and thoroughly.

The national policy on regional autonomy has apparently played an important role in encouraging the city administration to claim and make the islands a new regency in addition to its current mayoralties: Central, East, West, South and North Jakarta.

But actually, such an autonomous spirit should also encourage it to reform a number of regulations or create new ones to spur the development of the regency so that it can, at least, emulate the other five mayoralties. And in doing so, the welfare of the local people must come first.