Corruption and a lack of professionalism among government officials and contractors has contributed to many building failures across Jakarta, a seminar concluded on Friday.

Sulistijo Sidarto Mulyo, chairman of Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) charter of professional engineers, said “building failures” did not just mean building collapsing, but also included poorly planned buildings.

“New schools with no students, or overpriced construction costs for a seaport are also examples of building failures,” Sulistijo told a seminar held by Pelita Harapan University.

If the government and developers worked by the book, these failures could be avoided, he said.

In South Korea, for example, developers must show would-be buyers all materials they intend to use for an apartment, Sulistijo said.

“They [the developers] would not dare change the quality of the materials. Here, developers show materials in promotional brochures but then use lower quality materials in construction,” he lamented.

Sulistijo told a story about an earthquake in a country not unlike Indonesia, in 1985.

“All government buildings crumbled, and only a few were left intact. This showed that not only had substandard materials been used, but that corruption was also invovled,” he said.

A similar catastrophe could happen in Jakarta, Sulistijo said.

Another speaker, Manlian Ronald Simanjuntak of the UPH civil engineering faculty, said building conversions were often a sign of building failure too.

“Basically, if we don’t feel comfortable with a building, this is a sign of a building’s failure,” Manlian said.

He highlighted the conversion of residential areas in the city into commercial premises as a good example of building failure.

As the economy expands and spaces are increasingly hard to find, many Jakarta residents have converted their houses into commercial properties.

South Jakarta municipality reported that owners of 1,649 buildings were abusing their residential permits. Many of these were being used as beauty clinics, spas, cafes, restaurants, offices, storage facilities and pharmacies.

“This is a case of building failure, but the administration doesn’t dare recognize it as a failure because they were the ones who handed out the permits.”

Sulistijo said that good buildings were ones that provided the most benefit to an area, over a certain time frame.

“We are really weak in the area of supervision of building developments,” he said.

He admitted that an independent body, like MUPA (Manggala Utama Penilai Ahli) whose engineering experts members, had yet to take on a supervisory role in building planning and development in Jakarta. (iwp)

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