Jakarta "The Projects City"

Whatever the Problems, Project is the only Solution


If you walk around this city, you’ll find projects, almost in every area of the city. The latest, for cleaning the pool Bundaran HI, the Government of DKI Jakarta spend not less than Rp. 2.7 billion. The Jakarta administration is deemed to have more priority to business interests than to make a the strategic solution that pro-public interest.

One of the recent project of the Jakarta’s Government is the construction of the six section of the toll road across the city. This construction of this highway will increase the amount of the “paid road” to be ten percent of the overall length of the road. Jakarta government argued, the 70 km length road will be the solution of congestion problem. But if you take a look at the budget spent,  almost Rp. 40 trilion, the experts said, the fund is much appropriate allocated for the improve and integrated the transportation system that would simultaneously reduce the demand of the roads.

“The current road construction, more to serve bussiness interest, than the public one.” said Yayat Supriyatna, urban planning expert from Universitas Trisakti. He also said, the road construction, both toll and non-toll is not an appropriate solution to solve traffic problems.

On the similar tone with Yayat, Andrinof Chaniago, Universitas Indonesia’s lecturer on public policy, said that an error has been occurred in the Government’s paradigm in solving the problems. He said, policy policy paradigm that been adopted by the Government all this long is based on sectoral and partial approach, so the idea that often rise to overcome problems are projects. “Sometimes they’re wrong when imitating solution from the other country. They imitated projects and businesses, but not the policies.” Andrinof explain.

Jakarta’s “project-able” can be understood. Jakarta is one of the highest budget province in Indonesia. This city has budget more than Rp. 30 trillion a year, and keep rising every year. This number even far exceeds the budget of the Ministry of Home Affairs which budget’s only dozen trillion.

But the huge budget means nothing compared to the quality of services given. “For example, each health center of the city receive Rp. 1.2 billion per year, that means 100 millions per month. But the services is still in the standar course.” said Andrinof.

The Inequality of services compared to the budget makes a number of people suggests there’s something wrong with the budget system in Jakarta. But however, according to the Coordinator of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), Danang Widoyoko, not many cases arise from Jakarta.

Although the lack of cases, according to Danang, didn’t guarantee the government runs clean. “it could be otherwise, the corruption is very extraordinary. Until the people outside the system also got ‘part’”, he explained. “Transparency International and the Corruption Eradication Comission (KPK) know there’s something wrong with Jakarta. Unfortunately, not many cases of corruption are revealed” he ended.

(sipiliang, published in satu jakarta)