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Governor refuses to scrap 2030 spatial plan

Governor Fauzi Bowo stated Monday that he refused to totally revise the 2030 Jakarta spatial planning draft as requested by a coalition of concerned citizens, who are advocating greater public participation in their city’s future

Irawaty Wardany (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, March 23, 2010

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Governor refuses to scrap 2030 spatial plan

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overnor Fauzi Bowo stated Monday that he refused to totally revise the 2030 Jakarta spatial planning draft as requested by a coalition of concerned citizens, who are advocating greater public participation in their city’s future.

Fauzi said he was ready to face the legal consequences posed by Citizens Coalition for Jakarta 2030, who submitted a legal warning to the governor on Monday.

Fauzi said he would only listen to recommendations of the coalition on the condition that it represented the voice of majority of Jakartans.

The group claimed the governor failed to adequately represent public interest in the spatial development plans.

“It is common [for a group to file a legal warning], I am ready to face that,” he told reporters at his office, adding that his administration had provided the public sufficient avenues to have their say on the plans.

“But maybe [the coalition] does not consider it enough.” Fauzi said.

“I’ve heard comments from various parties regarding this matter and some of them have good ideas, but we should all think about the issue professionally.”

He said the plan was not made without consideration of various factors.

“Members of the spatial planning team are people I consider experts in their fields and they are also affiliated with people specialized in various disciplines of study,” Fauzi said.

He said the plan was open to modification, but he would not accept a completely new draft.

The coalition members said Sunday the administration had ignored their requests to engage the public in creating a 20-year plan for the city.

The group also said the Jakarta administration violated regulations, including the 2007 Spatial Planning Law and the 2008 Public Information Law, in the formulation of the draft.

The 2007 Spatial Planning Law requires that each province submit proposals for new spatial plans two years after being issued, while regencies or cities had three years to submit plans.

As of February, only 10 provinces, including South Sulawesi, Bali, Lampung, North Maluku, West Java and West Papua had secured approval from the Public Works Ministry for their proposed plans.

Nurkholis Hidayat, director of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute representing the group that issued a legal warning, said he had sent the letter to the governor on Sunday and Fauzi had contacted the coalition to say that he had tried to accommodate public interests in the draft.

“It is either his subordinates who falsely reported to him, or he is simply trying to avoid the fact there was no forum that invited any of the group’s members to talk about the design,” he told The Jakarta Post.

He also revealed the administration had tended to block access to information regarding the design.
He said that each year his institute received up to 50,000 reports from Jakartans, mostly from marginal groups, who had been forcedly relocated from their houses because of the business interests of developers.

He asked the administration to change the current draft and consult all stakeholders, including marginalized people who he said were often worst affected by spatial changes in Jakarta.

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