FILE PHOTO: General view of Garuda Palace, the future Presidential Palace, and ministerial offices under construction in the new capital city of Nusantara, a day before Indonesia's 79th Independence Day, in East Kalimantan province, Indonesia, August 16, 2024. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/File Photo
Jakarta: The construction of Nusantara, Indonesia’s planned new capital city in East Kalimantan, has drawn flak from analysts who fear the megaproject is veering toward elite private developments at the expense of inclusivity.
In the rush to unveil the new capital on Aug 17, in time for the country’s Independence Day celebration, the development had sidestepped essential urban-planning principles, prioritising groundbreaking on international hospitals and private schools but missing many public facilities, urban-planning expert Nirwono Joga told The Jakarta Post last Friday.
“The government was in a frenzy to show results, but what happens when no one actually uses these international-level facilities?” said Nirwono, who visited the site a couple of weeks ago.
“They’re rushing to break ground on everything, but if no one’s there to use these services, it’ll come back to bite them.”
To date, Nusantara has four hospitals under construction, including three private ones, and work has begun on at least four private international schools.
One of these, Al Azhar Summarecon Nusantara School, is set to open its doors for students next year.
The rapid development has also exposed glaring inequalities, Nirwono said, pointing out that essential workers like outsourced cleaning workers, who had been in Nusantara for months, were left to fend for themselves in shared housing on the outskirts.
“There’s no obligation to house these workers. No one wants to burn money for them,” he said, highlighting a growing disconnect between rampant organic development on the periphery and the grand vision for the city centre.
“This is the kind of issue the capital authority will have to face,” he added, warning that tackling the growing disparity would place a heavier financial burden on the state.
Moreover, while massive development was underway within East Kalimantan since the Nusantara project began, there was little to no investment flowing to other Kalimantan provinces, or to eastern regions of the country like Sulawesi and Papua, he pointed out.
“Delivering on the Indonesia-centric goal in national development is the task of the next government.”
Meanwhile, the government has sweetened the deal for civil servants to move to Nusantara with hefty incentives, but with little success.
The government had “prepared various scenarios for the move” but the fate of the planned capital was now in the hands of president-elect Prabowo Subianto, Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Abdullah Azwar Anas said last Wednesday.
Arizal, a top policy analyst at the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry, previously said the government was proposing incentives of up to 100 million rupiah or about US$6,300 for those willing to relocate, comparable to the performance allowances of top officials in the Nusantara Capital City Authority.
He justified the generous perks, noting that the international-standard schools and hospitals would otherwise be too expensive.
“How can they afford to pay for these international schools and hospitals without extra incentives?” Arizal said in August, in a video uploaded to the Presidential Staff Office’s YouTube channel.
Nailul Huda, director for digital economy at the Centre of Economic and Law Studies (Celios), ridiculed the reliance on these incentives, calling it a symptom of deeper issues.
“It’s funny that the more incentives are offered to civil servants, the more it shows no one actually wants to move to Nusantara,” he said last Friday.
“Civil servants should be ready to go wherever they’re needed, without extra bonuses. The fact that they do require additional incentives proves the infrastructure isn’t up to par yet.”
The disparity between the incentives for those moving to Nusantara and civil servants stationed in other remote areas was glaring, he pointed out, but in the end, business owners stood to gain the most from the government’s push to relocate workers and civil servants to Nusantara.
“The government is basically subsidising private businesses by forcing civil servants to move and offering them huge bonuses,” he said.
Without these incentives, he added, it would be tough for civil servants to justify the move.
The capital’s current development issues appear at odds with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s insistence that Nusantara is “a decision made by all”, as reflected in the backing from 93% of the House of Representatives.
“This isn’t just the president’s project; it’s a decision made by the entire nation, represented by all House members in Jakarta,” Jokowi said on Sept 25, in a video on the Presidential Secretariat’s YouTube channel.
Celios’ Nailul seemed unconvinced.
“It looks like Jokowi’s worried Nusantara won’t live up to the original vision,” he said. With the president “passing on responsibility” for the capital’s development, he argued that the public was beginning to see how rushed the planning had been, leaving behind plenty of issues to resolve in a tight timeframe. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
