Land dispute mars high-speed railway project

The confusion on the Indonesia-China joint project continued as the Indonesian Air Force, whose land would be affected by the project, remained in the dark.
Indonesian Air Force spokesman Wiko Sofyan responded in confusion when asked about the Transportation Ministry’s plan to issue a construction permit for all sections of the country’s first high-speed railway project by this week.
Wiko said he had no idea about the plan, despite meeting on Friday with officials from the ministry and the Indonesia-China joint venture Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC), which manages the project, to discuss the company’s plan to build railway tracks and a station inside the Halim Perdanakusuma military airbase in east Jakarta.
“I have not heard of it (the permit issuance plan),” he told The Jakarta Post.
So far all the parties had come up with was a solution to facilitate using the military area as part of the multibillion-dollar project.
The railway will serve four stations – Halim, Karawang, Walini and Tegalluar.
The latest estimate of the project cost stood at US$5.1 billion (Bt178 billion), although the figure could change due to a last-minute alternation of the track design to jack up the railway speed to 350 kilometres per hour from around 250km per hour.
Despite the scale of the project, the Transportation Ministry has only issued a permit for the construction of 5km of track in Walini, Bandung, and requires KCIC to first wrap up the procurement of land needed to develop the other railway sections before issuing the remaining permit. The government will give KCIC a fixed concession of 50 years starting on May 31, 2019, by which time construction must be complete.