Trans Java & the New Land Acquisition Bill is Good for Indonesia

I anticipated that the new land acquisition bill which will be tabled to the house of representative in a few weeks is definitely good for development in Indonesia. It speed-up acquisition process and saves time.

The new will allow the owners of the targeted land, have remedy to the value of their land. It is a very important and will be a milestone for development to take place rapidly.

According to news by Jakarta Globe, when it comes to acquiring land for public purposes, Indonesia is constrained by a law dating back to 1961, as well as by a presidential decree issued in 2005 and revised in 2006.

The 1961 law and decrees provides regulations to protect private property owners’ rights, but when expropriation was required, “the procedure is complicated and time-consuming.”The creation of a law to regulate public-use land procurement is due to strengthen the process’s legal basis.

Comparatively in Malaysia, where the land matter is concerned, the National Land Code made it clear that if ever the government wants to acquire land for public purposes, the Land Acquisition Act is applied. The act clearly gives the government power to acquire the property right away and people has to surrender their land but with remedy. The remedy is that they can fight for more value of their land if they wanted to but they have to vacate the land first.

Normally, what happened in the past was, when the government acquire their land, they end up getting rich. So much that, it will not deprive them their right. When they get fair compensation, the owners managed to get replacementor buy lands somewhere else.

One of the dead lock for Trans Java is that only 24 percent of the land needed for the 650-kilometer road has been acquired, meaning it won’t start construction or be completed on time as planned.

One of the characteristic of Malaysia’s National Land Code, is that when the administration or the government has issued acquisition to respective owner, there is no other way but to surrender the land.

But the acquisition power is only applied for projects to benefit the public. No other used is permitted to make an acquisition allowed. The provision of these is very clear.

The new Bill to be introduced carefully by the government of Indonesia, definitely speed up many major land acquisitions for infrastructure purposes.

I imagine one day I will drive with breeze through the mountains of Java with highway road from Anyir to Surabaya.

[caption id="attachment_120356" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Highway yg cantik di Amerika"][/caption]