By Willy Kurniawan

NUSANTARA, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesia celebrated its first Independence Day on Saturday at the site of its planned new capital, Nusantara, but the ceremony was held on a smaller scale because of problems and delays in the city, which is still under construction.

Nusantara, a legacy project of outgoing President Joko Widodo, has experienced construction delays and funding shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of foreign investment and, more recently, the resignation of project managers.

At Saturday’s celebration of the country’s independence from Japanese occupation, which ended in 1945, the number of participants was reduced from the original 8,000 to 1,300 guests because accommodation and food were limited, Jokowi, as the president is popularly known, said earlier this week.

Hundreds of participants from local communities and construction workers attended the ceremony under red umbrellas, with several buildings under construction behind them.

Mulyana, a 38-year-old construction worker in the new capital, said he had spent the past nine months building an office building for the ministry, which was partially used for the celebrations on Saturday because infrastructure to transport the materials was inadequate.

“For five months, we work in 24-hour shifts. Due to limited accessibility, we need two to three hours (a day) to move the concrete with heavy equipment,” Mulyana, who like many Indonesians has only a first name, told Reuters on Friday. He added that when he arrived a year ago, water and electricity supplies at the construction site were limited.

Nusantara will be built in a forested area in the east of the island of Borneo, about 1,200 kilometers from the current capital Jakarta on the island of Java.

In recent months, Jokowi has tried to boost confidence in the $32 billion mega-project. He broke ground on hotels and office buildings and held the first cabinet meeting in the eagle-shaped new state palace.

However, he also said plans to move thousands of officials to Nusantara could be postponed depending on the capital’s readiness, after previously ordering them to pack up and move in September.

Future President Prabowo Subianto, who also attended Saturday’s ceremony, has promised to continue Nusantara.

At the same time, a celebration took place in Jakarta, where most of the music and dance performances took place.

(Reporting by Willy Kurniawan in Nusantara, text by Bernadette Christina; editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)