Arti Ekawati, Jakarta Globe 1 Feb 10;
The Forestry Ministry said on Monday that it would investigate the building of luxury villas inside Gunung Halimun Salak National Park in Bogor, West Java. It is illegal to build inside conservation areas.
“Looking at the land status, which is national park, I think they built them without any permit,” Zulkifli Hasan, the minister of forestry, said after launching a new online system for the forestry industry in Jakarta.
The villas occupy 250 hectares of land, which was previously held by state-owned forestry company PT Perum Perhutani. But the company transferred the land to the Veterans Foundation (Yayasan Veteran) through a land-swap mechanism about 20 years ago.
Zulkifli said the Veterans Foundation had promised to exchange land in Subang, West Java, for the land in the park, but apparently no such swap was ever completed.
“Since there was no land swap from the foundation for the land in Halimun, we regard the deal between Perum Perhutani and Yayasan Veteran to have been cancelled and we regard the area to be a national park,” Zulkifli said.
He added that the ministry would soon form a team to investigate the matter, including the question of building permits and the land-swap mechanism.
“If there has been a land swap, we will check where the other land is. If there is no land, we will coordinate with the police,” he said.
Darori, the ministry’s director general of forest protection and nature conservation, said the ministry would determine who exactly owned the luxurious villas.
“If they belong to locally born people, we will change the status of the area to ‘conservation village’ since it is impossible to evict inhabitants from their native areas,” Darori said.
However, he said the ministry would destroy the buildings if the villas were determined to belong to people who were not native to the area.
Darori said that anyone building a house or villa in a conservation area without the correct legal documents could face a fine of Rp 5 billion ($535,000) and 10 years in prison.
Meanwhile, State Minister for the Environment Gusti Muhammad Hatta denied that his ministry was responsible for issuing permits for the construction of houses in conservation areas.
“We need to set the record clear. The state ministry does not have the authority to issue such permits. If there have been any [violations] then check at local government levels and if it’s going on in conservation areas, then it would be in the hands of the Forestry Ministry,” he said.
He added that the Environment Ministry had already approached the mayor of Bogor to discuss the building of villas in the district.
“Of course, we can not just immediately close down all villas at the same time, but we have come to an understanding that it [the growth] should decrease every year,” he said.
Additional Reporting by Fidelis E Satriastanti
