Jakarta, Casablanca Cities Strengthen Ties

Governor of Jakarta, Anies Baswedan. TEMPO/ Naufal Dwihimawan Adjiditho

The Indonesia`s capital city governor of Jakarta, Anies Baswedan visited Morocco and Turkey this week, as his first overseas visit after being inaugurated as the governor.

Anies Baswedan along with Sandiaga Uno in October 2017, were inaugurated as the governor and vice governor of Jakarta for the 2017--2022 period.

The Baswedan`s visit to Morocco and Turkey was aimed to strengthen relations in various fields.

Baswedan, who was once the Indonesian Education Minister, held separate meetings with Casablanca Mayor, Abdeelaziz Omari, and President of the Prefecture Council of Casablanca-Settat Region, Mustapha Bakkauri, on Wednesday (April 18) to discuss the efforts to step up relations between the two cities.

Jakarta and Casablanca have business opportunities to offer to their businessmen.

The two cities also agreed to strengthen cooperation in culture and arts, among other things, by conducting exchange of visits of arts missions.

On the occasion, Baswedan also invited Casablanca to set up a cultural center, with a building and park featuring typical of Casablanca architecture, in Jakarta.

Baswedan and Bakkauri signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) on upgrading the sister-city relations between Casablanca and Jakarta into sister-province relations, during the meeting with Bakkauri.

"The signing of the LOI is aimed at upgrading the cooperation between Jakarta and Casablanca-Settat region from sister city to sister province," he revealed.

In addition, the also discussed cooperation plans for 2019 in the fields of maritime, tourism, small- and medium-scale entrepreneurship (SME), education and training, and culture and tourism.

During his attendance in Morocco, Baswedan among others emerged as a keynote speaker at the Smart City Conference held in Casablanca on Wednesday.

He spoke about the "Strategic Master Planning Green Urban Development."

"The point is to deliver a city as a public service provider, and a city that involves its residents in turning City 2.0 into City 4.0, where technology plays a role as an enabler. This is the crucial role of smart city," he said.

Apart from that, Baswedan met Moroccan Home Affairs Minister Noureddine Bouteyeb in Rabat, Morocco and shared Indonesia`s experiences in carrying out decentralization and reform processes.

"As a nation, we have gone trough an extraordinary maturation process, and we have managed to develop economic and politic over the last 20 years together," the governor said.

It was not an easy task to develop economic and politic simultaneously after Indonesia had been hit by a grave economic crisis in 1997, he noted.

"Therefore, we offer them to learn from Indonesia, and we are ready to facilitate when they come to Jakarta," Baswedan remarked.

During in Morocco, academicians at the Casablanca Hasan II University in Morocco extended a warm welcome to Jakarta Governor following his arrival at the university, Thursday, where he later delivered a public lecture.

Baswedan was also welcomed with original musical arts and Moroccon local Ahwats dance performances. The governor was also invited to dance along with the artists, who greeted him.

On the occasion, Indonesia`s national anthem "Indonesia Raya" and the Moroccan national anthem "Hymne Cherifient" were played by a band when the flags of both countries were also raised at the event.

Several banners greeting Baswedan were put up on several corners of the campus, one of them being at the main gate of the Hasan II University.

On April 17, 2018, the Indonesian Embassy in Rabat held a meeting between Baswedan and the Indonesian community in Rabat to introduce the Jakarta City development programs in accordance with the Regional Medium-Term Development Plan 2017-2022.

After an official visit to Casablanca on April 19, 2018, Baswedan traveled to Istanbul to meet the invitation of Istanbul Mayor Mevlut Uysal. The visit also shows a sister city relationship between the two cities, which had been established in 2007.

On April 20, 2018, the Jakarta governor and the Istanbul mayor held a bilateral meeting to discuss the strengthening of the friendship and the development of cooperation between the two cities, including clean water and waste management, social facilities management, and tourism promotion.

Baswedan met with Director Genderal of Istanbul Water and Waste Management (ISKI) Fatih Turan, on Friday (Turkey time) to talk about the water management.

The Jakarta Governor`s visit to ISKI was aimed to know about the system of clean water management handled by the Turkey`s government.

The water treatment not only to make the water clean, but also to produce briquette as the result of the water treatment.

"ISKI gets no profit from the water management," Turan said.

Anies, meanwhile said, he would learn from ISKI how to sell water by not taking too much profit.

For ISKI the most important thing is to recover the costs of infrastructure and access to services in the community. (SUNDAY, 22 APRIL, 2018 | 09:44 WIB)