•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

City administrators appeared to throw up their hands on Monday in efforts to protect remaining slivers of green space — claiming that Jakarta was just too big and their staff too small to keep an eye on development.

Wiriyatmoko, the head of the city’s Spatial Planning Agency, said the administration did not have enough personnel to audit buildings due to a lack of funds.

“Honestly, we do not have enough money to employ people for the audit teams. Thus, when the private sector proposed that they wanted to help us in supervising and managing the buildings, we welcomed that,” he said. “We do not want to lose more green open space, which is very important for the city.”

Wiriyatmoko asked for help from the private sector to supervise and manage buildings in the capital.

“Jakarta is a 650-square-kilometer city,” he said, “and we would need many personnel to supervise the city.”

Separately, Nirwono Joga, head of the Indonesia Landscape Architecture Study Group, said his group and the Indonesian Association of Planners were both ready to step in and form audit teams for the green space supervision program next year.

“We have proposed to the planning agency that next year we should have audit teams to supervise buildings in superblock zones such as the Sudirman Central Business District and Mega Kuningan,” he said.

Joga said that he hoped the audit teams would be able to begin working next year as part of the city administration’s urban spatial planning scheme for 2010-30.

The appeal for help comes after decades of poor enforcement and constant lowering of the bar the city has set for itself.

Today, green space accounts for a scant 9.97 percent of the city’s total area, despite a plan drawn up in 2000 that stipulated a minimum of 13.49 percent of the city for urban green areas by 2010.

Within the last 25 years, the capital has lost almost a third of its open green spaces. The urban planning scheme for 1965-85 aimed to keep 37.2 percent of Jakarta as green spaces, however city planning data showed that by 1985 that figure had been reduced to 25.85 percent.

Industry experts have blamed corrupt city officials for the sharp decline in the amount of green space in the capital, saying that successive administrations have been susceptible to bribes from developers who wanted to build on land designated as green space.

Some buildings in the Sudirman Central Business District and Mega Kuningan areas, for example, have failed to comply with the standard requirement to reserve 30 percent of their property for green space.