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Bogor. Influential homeowners in Bogor are reportedly preventing the city’s administration from acting against 250 dwellings in the Puncak area that were built in breach of spatial planning rules, along with 12 buildings constructed without building licenses in a protected forest.

The Bogor district head, Rahmat Yasin, did not deny that the buildings were improperly sited.

“There certainly are those buildings, and they’re still there even though we have been trying to have them removed,” he said on Friday. “We will involve relevant parties soon.”

The district head agreed that the area was a vital rainwater infiltration area for Bogor as well as Jakarta, farther downstream.

“There has been a lot of research that demonstrates the decline of the Puncak area’s capacity as a rainwater infiltration area,” Rahmat said. “The area has been pinpointed as providing rapid runoff, which leads to flooding downstream.”

Although Rahmat did not want to reply with specific details when asked about influential homeowners who live in the area, his deputy, Karyawan Faturah, was more open.

“If we want to clean up this problem then we are going to need the assistance of the central government, because a large number of these dwellings belong to ‘people of influence’ in Jakarta,” he said.

In a 2009 survey, the spatial planning department of the Bogor district administration discovered 112 unauthorized holiday villas. In 2010 it identified another 163 of them, bringing the total to 275. The villas were built on land plots ranging from 0.1 hectares to two hectares.

The number of unauthorized villas was reduced to about 250 in late 2010, after a number of them were demolished in accordance with government orders.

There have been no demolitions in 2011, but Yani Hasann, head of the local spatial planning office, says he wants to recommence the demolitions in 2012.

“We are rechecking our data to determine which villas we need to demolish,” he said. “We will form a team to handle the demolitions, which will involve related agencies such as the forestry department.”

An additional 12 houses have been constructed in the Gede Pangrango protected forest area, and some of them belong to former government officials, according to the Bogor administration.

These former officials reportedly include Hari Sabarno, a former home affairs minister who is now on trial for corruption; Sutiyoso, a former governor of Jakarta; Jaja Suparna, a former military reserve commander; and HBL Mantiri, a former head of the Udayana Military Command.

Most of the unauthorized villas were built after the government passed the 2007 Spatial Planning Law, a 2008 presidential decree on spatial planning and 2008 Bogor bylaw on spatial planning. These laws all aim to prevent unauthorized development in Jakarta’s upstream catchment area because it aggravates flooding in the capital.