As a response to an increasing demand for infrastructure development, on Tuesday the engineering faculty at the University of Indonesia inaugurated the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure Development (CSID).

The institution is expected to help develop the reliable human resources needed for the country'€™s growing infrastructure sector, said Transportation Deputy Minister Bambang Susantono, who is also the executive board chairman of the CSID.

'€œThere are three main weaknesses in infrastructure development, namely implementation, coordination and human resources. Hopefully, the CSID is the answer to the human resource problem,'€ Bambang said in his opening speech.

The CSID would have 37 researchers and involve more than 200 students in the research projects. '€œWe want to give the young researchers a stage to perform on and eventually have them take over [the institution],'€ he said.

One of the first research projects the CSID will conduct will be a feasibility study on a high-speed railway to connect Jakarta with the capital city of East Java, Surabaya, according to Bambang.

'€œWe will calculate the benefit of the project. The main issue is definitely the financing scheme because we need not less than Rp 200 trillion (US$16.9 billion) to run the project. Obviously, it will be conducted with a PPP (public private partnership) scheme and we are now currently sorting it out,'€ he said.

The government has been considering a plan to adopt Japan'€™s Shinkansen high-speed railway, which would connect Jakarta and Surabaya, a distance of 700 kilometers, in less than three hours.

CSID has also started research on the Sunda Strait Bridge connecting Java and Sumatra, which is part of the government'€™s Master Plan for the Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesia'€™s Economic Development (MP3EI), according to UI engineering faculty dean Dedi Priadi.

The construction of the Sunda Strait Bridge and the Jakarta-Surabaya high-speed railway would be left to the next administration, the government has agreed.

During his speech at the CSID inauguration event that took place in UI'€™s Salemba campus, Coordinating Economic Minister Chairul Tanjung said that infrastructure should not be the purpose of development, but rather a tool to achieve sustainable development.

'€œInfrastructure is crucial for our national security, in terms of food and energy, among other things,'€ Chairul said. '€œFood security can only be achieved when we have an adequate irrigation infrastructure. As for energy security, we all know that what remains a problem in areas outside Java is electricity shortage.'€

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