PDIP Affirms That Anies Must Land Acquisition For Residential Areas On Riverbanks, Even Though The Normalization Removed

JAKARTA - The head of the PDI-P faction at the DPRD, Gembong Warsono, confirmed that the Governor of DKI Jakarta has proposed a change in the Medium-term Regional Development Plan (RPJMD) of DKI.

Currently, the draft revised RPJMD is being discussed by each faction of the DKI DPRD. Later, the DPRD will respond to the clause of the program changes.

One of polemic is the suspicion of eliminating the river normalization program. This was revealed by the PSI fraction. However, the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government has denied that it is removing any of the flood control programs.

Gembong admits that there is no problem with removing the term normalization, as long as Anies is still cleaning up his homework from the program. Moreover, said Gembong, Anies also has a river naturalization program.

"In the changes to the RPJMD, the main thing is about achievement targets, as in the 23 campaign promises. The question is whether the normalization program is eliminated, this is a matter of terms. In this journey, Sir Anies will focus on naturalization", said Gembong to VOI, Monday, February 15.

According to Gembong, while Anies was in Jakarta, the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government had not carried out its real duties regarding the arrangement of rivers, both the normalization and naturalization programs.

Instead of starting the program by acquiring residential land along the riverbanks, Anies emphasized a minimal flood control program such as making vertical drainage or infiltration wells.

"Pak Anies is so focused on disbursing hundreds of billions of budget only for vertical drainage. Meanwhile, for normalization this is put aside", said Gembong.

Gembong knew that Anies, during the 2017 DKI governor election campaign period, promised not to evict residents to alleviate the flood problem. However, for Gembong, land acquisition for residential areas on riverbanks must be done to prevent flooding in the capital.

"Don't just promise a campaign, instead of sacrifice more residents of the Capital City. If you want to alleviate the problem of flooding, like it or not, like it or not, you have to carry out evictions. Moreover, it is more about arranging settlements along the river so that they can be moved to more good residential areas", explained Gembong.

"If you want to naturalize or normalize, it ends up restoring the river alignment conditions as determined by the provisions of the law. It's up to you, you want to use the term normalization or naturalization", he continued.