The building of Tanjung Priok Station in North Jakarta is in the Indisch Classicism architectural style.

Five years after a major overhaul in 2009, the train station at Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, which was constructed during the Dutch colonial era, is in a mess once again due to a lack of care and maintenance.

If a portion of the state budget was allocated to the station, which has been named a heritage building, the grandeur of its European style and lofty ceiling hall could attract tourists.

Arifin and his three children were at the station recently and did not have a memorable experience. After missing the train to Surabaya, East Java, last weekend, instead of showing his children around the station while waiting for the next train, he asked them to not wander around because he was worried about the dripping ceiling.

'€œThe slippery floor is dangerous, so I don'€™t allow them to play around. They have to stick with me,'€ he said.

The ticket counter at the station looks shabby and the ornamental ceiling, riddled with mold, looks like it could fall down at any moment.

A classic: The ceiling structure

Warning signs were attached to pillars and buckets, to collect the dripping water from the ceiling, littered the floor.

Sunardi, a security officer, said that the ceiling had been in an awful condition since before he started working at the station in August last year.

Spokesman for state-owned railway operator PT KAI Operation Region (Daop) I Jakarta Agus Komarudin said his company was aware of dire conditions at the station, but the heritage building was still under the authority of the Railway Affairs Directorate General at the Transportation Ministry.

'€œWe proposed renovation to works to the Transportation Ministry around a week ago. The building is not PT KAI'€™s, so it could be wrong if we repaired the damage,'€ he told The Jakarta Post.

The train station opened on April 6, 1925, marking the first electric train service in the Dutch East Indies. It boasted an Indisch Classicism style of architecture and was declared by the city a type A heritage building.

Built from 1917 to 1921, the station that had eight railway tracks once served as a hotel, a cargo station and the main transit point for traders exiting ships at Tanjung Priok harbor for Batavia, the old name for Jakarta.

It also had a bunker estimated to be constructed between 1938 and 1940.

The harbor itself became Batavia'€™s primary harbor, replacing Sunda Kelapa to the west due to increased traffic resulting from the opening of the Suez Canal in the late 1800s.

The state railway company KAI stopped operating the station in 2000 because it wanted to focus on other popular routes, but reopened it in 2009 after a major overhaul.

Freelance archeologist Candrian Attahiyyat said the damage would not have become so severe if the building had been regularly maintained after the renovation.

'€œThe station should be cleaned often and the small leaks mended as a part of the maintenance. Perhaps the lack of state budget, which can only be proposed annually, is to blame,'€ he said over the phone recently.

Candrian said the heritage-tourism potential was big, but he had only seen lackluster efforts to promote it. KAI, he said, focused on cargo trains and passenger trains to East Java.

'€œThe effort to build and accelerate tourism is still small. The train station security officers even still forbid communities of photographers who want to take pictures of the station despite the fact that the station has become a popular tourist destination,'€ he said.

He said it would also be possible to rebuild a heritage hotel inside the station to generate more income to support maintenance.