T

he government stated on Friday that it had begun construction on the Jakarta Outer Ring Road West 2 (JORR W2) section, which will connect Ulujami in South Jakarta and Kebon Jeruk in West Jakarta.

The head of the Public Works Ministry land procurement team, Ambardy Effendy, said that the repeatedly delayed project had finally begun in mid November, with work beginning on the foundation pillars along the Kebun Jeruk–Meruya section.

“The work started along that section because we have procured all the needed land there,” Ambardy said.

The construction for the toll road is divided into four sections: Kebon Jeruk–Meruya, Meruya–Joglo, Joglo–Ciledug and Ciledug–Ulujami.

“We will construct the toll road section by section,” Ambardy.

He said that the work on the second section would begin in January.

The construction had been scheduled to begin in June this year, but was delayed due to land procurement problems.

A total of 790 plots of land are needed for the construction. Twenty-four plots are still under legal disputes. “We failed to start the work according to the schedule because of the troublesome procurement”.

Ambardy said his team had been allocated Rp 610 billion (US$67.6 million) to procure land for the project.

The procurement committee has secured 78 percent of the land needed in South Jakarta and 93 percent of that needed in West Jakarta, he said.

The committee uses a consignment system suggested in the 2006 Presidential Regulation to procure privately owned land, because a number of efforts to negotiate land prices with residents had failed.

Under the consignment system, the committee places the land ownership in the hands of a local court, but retains ownership until the legal problems or payments have been settled.

The land procurement was sped up after state-owned Bank Mandiri channeled Rp 1.4 trillion (US$154 million) in a syndicated loan for the construction of the toll road.

The 7.67 kilometer-long road will be a part of the Jakarta Outer Ring Road (JORR), a network of toll roads that will connect Jakarta to its satellite cities.

The syndicated loans for the Kebon Jeruk-Ulujami toll road project total Rp 1.55 trillion, the rest of which came from city-owned Bank DKI.

— JP/Andreas D. Arditya