Apartment Owners Blast Developers

Owners of apartments in Jakarta have raised concerns that major property developers are trampling on their rights as consumers and tenants.

Mendacity, the rigging of tenants’ associations and the withholding of transaction deeds are some of the charges the owners leveled at developers during a discussion Tuesday.

Naswardi, the owner of an apartment in Permata Hijau, South Jakarta, said she had paid for the apartment several years ago in cash, but had still not received the deed of purchase.

Aguswandi Tanjung, a tenant of the ITC Roxy Mas apartment block in West Jakarta, said property developers had rigged tenants’ associations from the get-go by placing their own people in it.

The associations are responsible for managing the apartments.

A 2007 ministerial regulation on apartments stipulates tenants’ associations are supposed to manage the monthly fees levied from all tenants and maintain the building by appointing a contractor.

But because developers had placed insiders in these associations, Aguswandi said, the management effectively fell to the developers, who then acted like the owners of the buildings.

“The fact, though, is that the tenants own the buildings,” he said.

He said stricter monitoring of apartment managements and tenants was needed to weed out poor service.

Aguswandi was arrested on Sept. 8 after charging his cell phone in the corridor outside his apartment.

He said he had been forced to charge outside after the building management cut off the electricity to his apartment.

Building management PT Jakarta Sinar Intertrade filed charges with the Gambir Police against Aguswandi for “stealing electricity”.

Tedi Tantular, from the Indonesian Association of Apartment Owners, said there had also been cases where developers had sold apartments in blocks built on land owned by the city, without notifying the buyers.

Sudaryatmo, from the Indonesian Consumer Protection Foundation (YLKI), said there was a worrying trend of consumers being criminalized, as in the case of Aguswandi.

Earlier this year, North Jakarta resident Khoe Seng Seng was convicted of defaming the developer of a North Jakarta mall, after a complaint he wrote about the latter was printed in a local newspaper.

Sudaryatmo said complaints about housing and residences had crept into the top five list of complaints the YLKI had received over the past five years.