P

ublic Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto said on Monday that the long-awaited Trans-Sumatra toll road project would not begin this year as previously planned due to land acquisition problems.

'The tender awaits the completion of land acquisition. Therefore, we will focus on acquiring the land needed to construct the toll road within the next two or three years and construction will begin after we settle the land acquisition,' Djoko said at a media briefing on Monday.

The 2,700-kilometer toll road project, stretching from Aceh to Lampung and consisting of 23 sections, was previously planned to commence construction this year. The toll road will connect major cities in Sumatra.

The initial construction comprised four toll road sections, namely Medan-Binjai, Indralaya-Palembang, Pekanbaru-Dumai and Bakauheni-Terbanggi Besar.

In order to construct the toll road, the government needs to acquire 218,976 million square meters of land. The minister acknowledged that until now, the ministry had acquired only an 'insignificant percentage of the land needed to construct the roads'.

He did not mention the exact percentage.

'We estimate that the cost to acquire the land is Rp 15 trillion [US$1.3 billion]. After we acquire the land, we will protect it against local residents willfully occupying it,' said the ministry's director general for highways, Djoko Murjanto.

Besides being hindered by land acquisition problems, the ministry is also still waiting for the issuance of a presidential decree as a legal basis to construct the toll road.

Construction will be carried out by state-owned enterprises with funding from the state budget.

The draft decree prepared by the ministry states that should the appointed state-owned enterprises be unable to finish the project, the task will be taken over by the ministry.

Minister Djoko said the ministry had submitted the draft revision to the Cabinet secretary and hoped that the draft would be finalized soon.

He also said the appointment of state-owned contractor company PT Hutama Karya had not been finalized.

'What is certain is that state-owned enterprises will work on the project,' he said.

During the media briefing, Djoko said the ministry had built 4,401 km of roads over the past 10 years.

Based on ministry data, the length of roads built by the ministry in 2004 reached around 34,000 km. The length increased to only 38,401 km in 2014.

Meanwhile, the total length of toll roads in the country reached only 918 km this year, increasing only 307 km from 2004, the minister added.

'Even though the total length of roads has not increased significantly, we have widened and strengthened roads. The fact is that economic development outpaces road development. Therefore, the public still complains about traffic jams,' the minister said, adding that road projects could be accelerated if land acquisition went smoothly.