Would-be home owners complain to rights body
JAKARTA (JP): A delegation representing 700 disgruntled housing consumers from the East Java capital of Surabaya brought their dispute with an unlisted developer to the National Commission on Human Rights here yesterday.
Delegation spokesman Agus Widodo told commission member Clementino Dos Reis Amaral they have been denied their right to land and housing ownership by the Sidoarjo Puskoveri housing development unit.
Puskoveri is the Indonesian acronym for the cooperative run by retired military officers.
"We have paid installments, which should have given us the right to own the land and the housing units the developer had promised us," Agus said.
The disputed housing complex is located across four villages, Kemiri, Gebang, Wedoro Klurak and Kali Pecabean in Sidoarjo, East Java. It covers a total of 70 hectares, Agus said.
In November 1993 about 2,100 people signed purchasing agreements with the Sidoarjo Puskoveri, said Agus.
Two years later there were still no houses despite the fact that many of them have paid installments, he said.
"The manager in charge of Sidoarjo Puskoveri's housing development unit, Soekardjo Tjitro Handojo, had disappeared," Agus told the rights body.
Matters worsened when a Jakarta developer proposed a new housing development scheme with terms unfavorable to the customers, he said.
"Higher prices were asked for smaller plots, and even weaker ownership status. There were also changes to the housing locations," he said.
The new developer treated the consumers' installments, paid since 1993, as a deposit and a down payment on the houses it was planning to build, Agus said.
The sum of money paid in installments by the 700 consumers totals Rp 2.5 billion (US$1.1 million), he said.
"The developer claimed it had used the money to buy the land in the four villages. What right does the developer have to act that way?" he asked.
Agus said Puskoveri will soon begin developing 88 simple houses on disputed land in Kali Pecabean village in Candi district. (26)