Callistasia Wijaya

While Jakarta celebrates its 489th anniversary on Sunday, Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama has admitted that he has not managed to solve two big problems facing the city: traffic congestion and the inept city bureaucracy.

“We haven’t succeeded in solving the traffic gridlock and inept bureaucracy,” said the governor at City Hall on Monday.

He cited as an example the poor performance of land acquisitions due to what he called the “land mafia”, allegedly involving civil servants working in the city administration. The governor said he could not blame certain people because he did not have enough evidence to take action.

He also said the worsening traffic in many parts of the city was partly caused by the construction of many major projects including the MRT, the Semanggi Interchange and the LRT.

He said that expelling private vehicles from Transjakarta lanes had also contributed to the worsening traffic congestion, but that he would go ahead with the policy to help encourage motorists to switch to public transportation. He promised to deploy more buses along the 12 busway corridors to improve the services of the city-owned public transportation system.

On land acquisition, Ahok particularly blamed the head of the city parks and cemetery agency Ratna Diah Kurniati and her failure to do her job. In response, Ratna said the agency was in the process of acquiring 137 plots of land.

“We are discussing the prices with land owners in 25 locations and we will carry out the purchases of the land this week,” Ratna said at City Hall on Monday. (bbn)

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