1,000 Broken Road Stretches in Jakarta Will Have to Wait Until 2012
Dofa Fasila | February 26, 2011
While the authorities struggle to ease traffic in the capital, the Jakarta Public Works Office said on Friday that more than 1,000 damaged sections of roadway throughout the city would have to wait until next year at the earliest to get proper funding for repairs.
Office head Ery Basworo said 1,010 stretches of road were categorized as damaged or potholed. Most are in West Jakarta, with 426 worn-out sections, compared with South Jakarta's 264, Central Jakarta's 159, East Jakarta's 98 and 63 in North Jakarta.
Ery said the city administration would propose to the City Council that repairs in West Jakarta be categorized as a dedicated program under the 2012 budget.
He said patching the roads there alone was expected to cost Rp 35.4 billion ($4 million). Until they could find extra funding, he went on, his office would continue carrying out routine maintenance and repairs, even though the budget allocation had been sharply reduced from last year.
"For 2011, we've been allocated between Rp 60 billion and 70 billion for road repairs and maintenance. Last year, we got Rp 80 billion to 90 billion," Ery said.
"The entire budget for the Public Works Office has also been slashed, from Rp 441 billion in 2010 to Rp 221 billion in 2011."
Meanwhile, the city has been struggling to come up with solutions to ease the notorious traffic in the capital, with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono recently ordering the administration to see progress by 2014 and untangle the gridlock by 2020.
One of the planned solutions, a partial truck ban, is supposed to go into effect on April 1, but on Friday officials revealed that they were still the midst of a potentially embarrassing disagreement over its implementation.
Jakarta Police Chief Insp. Gen. Sutarman announced that the ban on all truck traffic in the city would be from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., and would apply to all roads in Jakarta as well as satellite cities Tangerang, Depok and Bekasi.
But city administration officials insisted later in the day that that wasn't final yet, saying they favored a 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. schedule and that Tanjung Priok port operator Pelindo was resistant to the idea of any ban. |
