Agnes Winarti and Khairul Saleh, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta/Palembang | Wed, 07/27/2011 8:00 AM
Only 107 days to go until the region’s largest sports showdown, the Jakarta-Palembang 26th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games begin, Jakarta will get extra restoration work as Lebak Bulus Stadium has received a late commission as a soccer venue.
The Indonesia SEA Games Organizing Committee (INASOC) announced on Monday that all the soccer matches will be hosted in Jakarta, instead of Palembang. The organizer previously planned that the 40,000-capacity Gelora Sriwijaya Stadium and Jakarta’s 88,083-capacity Gelora Bung Karno would share the event but that decision was halted on Monday.
With the main soccer venue at Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Central Jakarta, South Jakarta’s Lebak Bulus Stadium, which is the capital’s second-best soccer stadium, will also host soccer matches throughout the Nov. 11-22 Games.
Hosting the SEA Games soccer matches might be the final outing for the 15,000-capacity stadium, which will be torn down by the end of the year to make way for the city administration’s mass rapid transit (MRT) project.
Palembang, however, has five more venues under construction until September.
The decision to relocate all the soccer venues to Jakarta was made after Palembang officially confirmed its inability to host the soccer group’s qualifier match four days before the SEA Games opening ceremony on Nov. 11. As of Nov. 5 the stadium, which is also known as the Jakabaring Stadium, is expected to be sterilized from all activities prior to the opening ceremony.
“We’ll be ready, as long as we only need to perform minor restoration work, such as painting and improvements to public toilet facilities, which should cost less than Rp 200 million (US$23,470). There is no more time to perform major make-overs that would require project tenders,” head of Jakarta sports agency, Ratiyono, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Ratiyono said that although time-consuming, he preferred to adhere to the tenders regulation required for city administration projects costing over Rp 200 million, while he referred to the ongoing graft case on the SEA Games athletes’ village construction project in Palembang.
Tardy venue restoration due to tender procedures has occurred at the cycling venue at Rawamangun Velodrome, East Jakarta. The track event venue, which was supposed to be ready in June, is just beginning its repair work after a tender was finalized early this month. On-going revamps at the rowing venue at Lake Cipule are also hoped to be completed in September.
“We’re still counting the required allocation,” said Ratiyono, declining to reveal the proposed allocation for the late restoration of the Lebak Bulus Stadium, which in 2002 hosted the Tiger Cup ASEAN Football championships. In 2008, it was renamed as the AFF Suzuki Cup.
Although acknowledging that minor make-overs would be sufficient for the stadium, INASOC deputy, Djoko Pramono, estimated that around Rp 3 billion would be required.
“The stadium needs better lighting, changing rooms for athletes and a media room. So, we temporarily proposed an allocation of Rp 3 billion from the Youth and Sports Ministry,” Djoko told the Post.
“It’s time for Jakarta to open the tender immediately. I’ve learnt that the tender procedure can be done prior to the approval of allocation,” urged Djoko. He was speaking after accompanying the SEA Games’ delegations on Tuesday for inspections on the condition of the venues in Jakarta.
Inspections in Jakarta, the host of 24 sporting events at the biennial Games, included visits to the judo hall in Kelapa Gading, the kempo hall in Ciracas, and the vovivam venue in Tanjung Priok, which are claimed to be in an “excellent condition”, as they are newly-built.
Meanwhile, the Palembang organizing committee also assured that by September, all construction of the venues would be completed. “We’re optimistic that all [construction] will be completed by September,” South Sumatra governor, Alex Noerdin, told a media conference on Tuesday at the end of the SEA Games’ delegation inspections in Palembang.
Since last month, Palembang, the host of 21 sporting events, has begun venue constructions for petanque, softball, roller sport, wall climbing, and soft tennis. Head of South Sumatra’s sports council, Muddai Madang, also blamed the tender requirements for the tardy construction work.
Among the SEA Games’ delegations, a Singaporean delegate named Joseph from the Singapore Biliard and Snooker Council criticized the unasphalted dirt roads in the Jakabaring Complex and unpleasant public toilet facilities.
