Fauzi blames slow progress on bureaucracy

Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo is blaming slow infrastructure development in the capital on a rigid central government bureaucracy.

Fauzi said that red tape has slowed development planning for several infrastructure projects.

“We spend more time on the non-technical aspects of infrastructure project than on making engineering designs,” Fauzi said at a seminar at the Public Works Ministry on Monday.

Fauzi, who started his career in the city bureaucracy in the late 1970s, said that two issues foiled every infrastructure project in the city.

The first stumbling block was excessive central government regulation, Fauzi said. “Many regulations issued by the central government have placed lengthy delays on a number of infrastructure projects in Jakarta.”

A second handicap was funding. “Not all infrastructure projects can be financed by public money or through public-private partnerships,” he said, calling for alternative funding sources.

Fauzi’s administration has spent the last two years waiting for the Finance Ministry to deliver US$150 million (Rp 1.36 trillion) from a World Bank loan to pay for the Jakarta Emergency Dredging Initiative (JEDI) to dredge the city’s main rivers.

Under the JEDI program, a joint project of the Public Works Ministry and the City Public Works Agency, 13 rivers will be dredged, including the Cakung River in East Jakarta, the Sunter, Kamal and Angke Rivers in North Jakarta, and the Ciliwung River.

The dredging is a short-term project scheduled to be carried out over three years using equipment from the Netherlands.

Fauzi has repeatedly blamed the program’s slow progress on the central government for impeding the city’s plans.

In another long-delayed initiative, Fauzi called on the Transportation Ministry to finish drafting of a regulation that would legalize the city’s Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system.

The central government has yet to finalize regulations under the 2009 Traffic Law that the city needs to impose the ERP.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed Government Regulation (PP) No. 32/2011 on Traffic Management and Engineering in June after receiving a draft regulation compiled by the Transportation Ministry’s Land Transportation Directorate General through the State Secretariat.

The city is still waiting for the Finance Ministry to draft a separate regulation that would categorize ERP charges as a tax to avoid accounting problems under the 2009 Regional Tax and Retribution Law.

Setyo Sarwanto Moersidik, a civil engineering expert from the University of Indonesia in Depok, West Java, agreed with Fauzi that politics were slowing development in the city.

“All planning is a form of compromise between technical needs and political demands,” Setyo said.

The character of government officials was paramount.

“The character of leadership affects the character of policies produced,” he said.