Govt to add 10 hours of power to islands

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

After decades of being untouched by development, Kepulauan Seribu regency in North Jakarta will soon be in the spotlight.

The installation of undersea power cables next year is set to brighten up life on the regency's islands, with the provision of electricity 24 hours a day.

The Jakarta administration plans to establish a medium-power electricity network reaching from Teluk Naga on Untung Jawa to Lancang and Tidung islands.

"This year we will invest Rp 114 billion (US$ 12,5 million) in the project," Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo said Friday at City Hall.

Fauzi said the money to finance the 43-kilometer undersea power cable project would come from the 2007 city budget.

"The project is expensive because all the cables are imported," he said, adding that by 2009 every island of the regency would have adequate electrical power.

Currently, Kepulauan Seribu, which has some 20,000 inhabitants, is supplied with electricity for only 14 hours a day from a diesel generator at a cost of Rp 40 billion to the city administration.

"This project is the first cooperation between the city administration and PLN in the regency," Fauzi said, adding that the administration was funding the network procurement and PLN would manage distribution.

He said they would soon hold a tender for the project and hopefully, midway through the year, the development process would start.

The administration will use a pre-paid system, as in the use of cell phones, to keep electricity usage under control once the project is finished.

"Residents will buy a kind of account card as in the pre-paid cell-phone system to activate the electricity," Fauzi said.

Although the name Kepulauan Seribu means thousand islands there are in fact 105 islands stretching 45 kilometers north into the Java Sea with the closest lying in Jakarta Bay, only a few kilometers off mainland Jakarta.

On average, the islands are less than 10 hectares in total and less than three meters above sea level.

A number of islands have been developed as tourist resorts, and islands in the northern part of the regency have been zoned as a national marine park to preserve underwater resources.

As a tourist destination, Kepulauan Seribu is striving to build proper facilities on the islands, including an airport.

In 2005, Kepulauan Seribu Regent Djoko Ramadhan cited his plan to build an airport in Pulau Panjang and had started the tender process, but up to now there has been no significant progress in the project.