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Overloaded vehicles and corruption are 'main reasons' for Indonesia's poor road condition
Truck overloading and rampant corruption at the regional level are among the main contributing factors for Indonesia's persistent poor road infrastructure especially in remote areas, transportation expert Djoko Setijowarno says.
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A banana tree is placed in the middle of Jl Ciangsana, Gunung Putri, Bogor, West Java, on Oct. 10, 2016, as a symbol of protest against the local administration for not repairing the damaged road, which is often inundated by flood water during heavy rains. (JP/P.J. Leo)
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ruck overloading and rampant corruption at the regional level were among the main contributing factors for Indonesia's persistent poor road infrastructure especially in remote areas, transportation expert Djoko Setijowarno says.
The country's chronic poor road infrastructure recently grabbed national attention when Sydney-based Lampung student Bima Yudho Saputro posted a TikTok video criticizing the local administration’s inaction over damaged roads that went viral.
The issue led President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to visit Lampung for an infrastructure inspection on May 5 and neighboring Jambi and North Sumatra some two weeks later, during which his motorcade traveled on a muddy dirt road in North Labuhan Batu, North Sumatra. The President said he was concerned poor road quality could increase inflation through heightened logistics costs, and pledged the central government could take over the work of improving road infrastructure in the three provinces if the provincial administrations failed to do the job.
Jokowi also invited netizens to report damaged roads via his social media accounts, where he received some 7,400 reports from various regions across the archipelago.
Read also: Govt prioritizes roadwork in Jambi, North Sumatra to avoid inflation
A 2021 data from Statistics Indonesia revealed there are 446,787 kilometers of city roads in Indonesia, 54,557 km of provincial roads and 47,071 national roads. According to transportation expert Djoko, a staggering 52 percent of all regional roads in the country are currently damaged.
Djoko said although the central government had allocated Rp 32.7 trillion (US$2.2 billion) for roadworks this year, damaged roads would likely persist unless authorities also fix the underlying issues behind the problem.
