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“Everything is progressing,” said Mr Widodo, who arrived at the site earlier this week to take stock of the apparent delays. “This is a job that takes 10, 15 or 20 years, not just one, two or three years.”
AFP’s recent visit to Nusantara showed not only the wing-shaped presidential palace, designed after the mythical bird Garuda, but also unfinished buildings and bumpy roads amid dust kicked up by trucks and excavators.
Nusantara is due to be inaugurated on August 17, Indonesia’s Independence Day, but construction delays, funding problems and officials’ reluctance to move there have raised doubts about whether it can effectively serve as the new capital.
A decree formally transferring capital status from Jakarta to Nusantara has yet to be issued and can only be done once Prabowo Subianto, winner of February’s presidential election, takes power in October.
Jakarta, a metropolis of 12 million residents, is crumbling under car traffic and pollution and threatened by rising water levels.
That’s why Joko Widodo, nicknamed “Jokowi,” has revived a long-abandoned project to relocate the capital. The goal: to rebalance development across the vast archipelago of 17,500 islands, which has so far been concentrated on Java.
The site chosen is on the east coast of Borneo Island, 1,200 kilometers northeast of Jakarta and a two-hour flight away. According to preliminary plans, it will be built in five phases by 2045, with the first phase to be put into operation this summer.
– ‘No crisis’ –
“As you can see, we are on the right track,” Nusantara infrastructure manager Danis Sumadilaga told AFP at the site, assuring that the first phase of work was 80 percent complete.
“But … this is the first step in a long-term development. It’s not for today. It’s for our next generation,” he added.
Another manager close to the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told a different story, saying the first phase was close to 20 per cent complete.
In the city, armies of workers are toiling around empty towers, forced to stick to an August 17 delivery date.
“We are definitely under pressure to meet our Merdeka Day targets,” admitted Jamaluddin, a 47-year-old concrete factory manager who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name.
“Weather conditions are very bad,” added 37-year-old worker Nisya Khairunnisa, after persistent rains at the site in recent weeks.
The city’s chief and his deputy resigned in June because of the delays.
Adding to this is the difficulty of attracting significant foreign investment. Jakarta will finance 20% of the new city, but will need 100 trillion rupiah (5.6 billion euros) in private investment by the end of 2024.
By the end of June, 5.13 trillion rupees (2.9 billion euros) had been raised from state donors alone.
Experts say foreign companies are reluctant to invest in the city, which is located in one of the world’s largest rainforests and is home to orangutans and proboscis monkeys.
“They don’t want to invest in a project that harms biodiversity,” explains Ida Greenbury, an Indonesian sustainable development expert.
For Nikki Farizal of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, “It is an impossible task. The state finances do not allow for the construction of a giant building in one or two years.”
– Unwilling to move –
The project’s progress has not encouraged about 10,000 civil servants to settle in Nusantara from September next year.
“It’s clear that the facilities are not enough,” said a civil servant in his 30s, who like others agreed to speak to AFP on condition of anonymity. “We’re told it will actually become a city in 2045. But we have to start settling there from 2024. What will our lives be like then?”
Even the promise of special bonuses and moving expenses did not change their minds.
“I’m still very reluctant to move,” another 32-year-old civil servant revealed.
But the government is counting on the loyalty and sacrifice of its agents: “Those who arrive will be the vanguard,” stressed Sofian Sibarani, the city’s architect.
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