Jakarta governor takes on floods, transport

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's capital needs huge investment in infrastructure to fix problems including flooding and poor public transport, and will seek funds from international agencies and possibly the bond market, the governor said.

Fauzi Bowo, who was elected governor of Jakarta last year, has a Herculean task ahead of him.

Two-fifths of Jakarta is prone to flooding during the rainy season, which typically lasts several months. Traffic congestion grows worse by the day as more and more Jakartans buy cars and motorcycles given the lack of an adequate mass-transport system.

A steady influx of job-seekers, estimated at 260,000 in the past two years (2006-2007), has swelled the city's population of 10 million. Many of these newcomers have no access to proper housing, piped water or sanitation. Compounding the problems, law enforcement is often a matter of money.

"We're constrained financially. I need a lot of money to catch up with the infrastructure," said Bowo in an interview for Reuters' global environment summit.

A number of other low-lying Asian cities, for example Bangkok, Shanghai and Singapore, have improved infrastructure and created a more attractive environment for residents and tourists.

But tactics that work well in orderly Singapore, such as on-the-spot fines for littering and spitting, and hefty taxes or charges for car-owners, would prove ineffective in a place like Jakarta where, as any motorist will tell you, the police are easily bribed and public transport remains unreliable.

STINKING CANALS

Tackling the floods, which cause chaos in the capital every year, remains Bowo's top priority.

The Dutch colonial rulers left Jakarta with a system of canals and catchments to channel the rainwater out to sea, but today many of the canals are filthy, stinking, open sewers clogged with rubbish.

"We need to revitalize all the canals," he said. "The system has not been upgraded or completely installed. We have to make the system and guarantee it will work."

Bowo said the flooding could be fixed within three years by dredging existing canals and building a new canal on the eastern side of the city, at a cost of $150 million and $560 million respectively.

Work on both has started, and he is now talking to the World Bank about funding.

"The canals can only function properly if they are not hindered by trash or whatever people throw into the canal," Bowo said, and that requires educating the public about the value of recycling and disposing of rubbish correctly, rather than tossing it into the nearest canal.

The message is being spread by NGOs and organizations such as Koran reading groups. In a bid to create a better environment for local communities, Bowo has authorized the local government to buy up small parcels of land which are then turned into parks.

SCRAMBLE FOR LAND

Other big-ticket infrastructure projects include a subway, a skytrain, and toll roads, all of which will take years to complete.

Only when those are in place will it be feasible to introduce electronic road pricing systems to get the cars and motorcycles off the road, Bowo said.

Meanwhile, the number of vehicles on the roads is steadily increasing by 11-12 percent a year, while road surface area has only increased 0.01 percent, Bowo said.

While the city of nearly 14 million, if the suburbs are included, is bursting at the seams, Bowo said it is proving nearly impossible to stop the influx, leading to a scramble for land.

Jakarta has been providing small grants to skilled workers to encourage them to move to some of the provinces, but the outflow is minuscule.

"We are pushing the central government to introduce a single ID number and once we have that, we can control the mobility of people," he said.

(Editing by David Fogarty)