Jakarta To Restore 33 Parks This Year

Jakarta, Nov 6 (Antara) - The Jakarta administration will renovate 33 large parks this year in a bid to beautify the capital city. The parks to be renovated include those located along the Imam Bonjol Road, Pramuka Park, and Amir Hamzah, Nandar Sunandar, the chairman of the Jakarta Park and graveyard office, stated here on Tuesday. "The parks developed by the provincial government are meant to serve as educational parks where the people can also exercise and the children can play," he noted. He emphasized that the facilities and infrastructure in the park areas would also be improved. He called on the public to bring to book anyone found misusing the public parks. Jakarta has a total of 2,523 green open spaces spanning an area of 2,734 hectares. He hoped that the renovation work will be completed in accordance with the predetermined schedule. In November 2012, former governor of Jakarta Joko Widodo expressed his commitment to provide Jakarta`s residents with green open spaces covering 30 percent of the capital city`s total land area by the end of his five-year term. "We hope there will be a thousand public parks spread across every neighborhood in Jakarta," Jokowi, currently Indonesia`s president, stated. Jakarta is spread over a total land area of 661.52 square kilometers and maritime area of 6,977.5 square kilometers. The Jokowi government has set itself a target of creating 198.7 square kilometers of green open spaces in Jakarta by 2018. The current 66.1 square kilometers of green open spaces constitute almost 10 percent of Jakarta`s total land area. The city needs to have an additional 20 percent, or 132.2 square kilometers, of green open spaces in order to meet the government`s 30 percent target.