Are the urban poor marginalized bye the city?<\/p>\n
Ida Indawati Khouw, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
Who's the enemy of the Jakarta administration this year? The
\nanswer is neither criminals, nor poverty, nor others one might
\nthink more obvious.<\/p>\n
The enemy, perversely, is the urban poor.<\/p>\n
This statement is no exaggeration. In fact, it can be proven
\nif we review what the administration has been doing to the poor
\nthroughout the year, backed by regulations that don't allow
\nlivable space for the legions of disadvantaged among us.<\/p>\n
The long, sad, stories of confiscations of becak (pedicabs),
\nthe demolition of houses along riverbanks, the destruction of
\nsidewalk kiosks, the arrests of street children and other types
\nof cruel repression against the urban poor has become all too
\ncommon.<\/p>\n
It began during the second part of 2001, a time when city
\nofficials started formulating a plan to clean the city of its
\npoor.<\/p>\n
Among the eviction cases that ravaged slum dwellers' homes and
\ntheir lives took place in Ancol in North Jakarta, along
\nriverbanks of Pejagalan and Kapuk Muara in West Jakarta, and in
\nthe area below the elevated railway in Karang Anyar, Central
\nJakarta.<\/p>\n
In many instances, the confiscations and evictions, sometimes
\nconducted very early in the morning, involved force and
\ngratuitous violence with large numbers of military and police
\npersonnel, municipal security guards and even militia members.<\/p>\n
Where did the poor go to live afterward?<\/p>\n
Some slum residents moved on to occupy space at locations like
\nthe National Commission for Children's Protection in East
\nJakarta, the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute in Central Jakarta,
\nor simply erected tents around the areas from where they were
\nevicted, leading to poor sanitation that contributed to a variety
\nof illnesses.<\/p>\n
Data collected by the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) and other
\nNGOs that work with the urban poor shows that a total of 49,315
\nbecak drivers, food vendors, and car washers lost their
\nlivelihood between January and September of 2001. Multiply that
\nby an average of three dependents, and a total of 197,260 persons
\nlost their means of living.<\/p>\n
In October 2001, the Jakarta administration reported that it
\nhad confiscated 11,400 becak, stored them in a warehouse, and was
\nplanning on dumping them into the sea to serve as an artificial
\nhabitat for fish.<\/p>\n
The administration's directives have led to suffering for
\nthousands of poor people. From January to October 2001 alone, UPC
\nmonitored the demolition of 5,785 houses, resulting in the
\ncollective displacement of 23,140 people, a number reached by
\nfactoring in an estimated average of four persons per family.<\/p>\n
In October alone, a partial monitoring conducted by NGOs
\nindicated that some 2,470 families, or 9,880 people altogether,
\nwere displaced either due to forced evictions, arson or a
\ncombination of both.<\/p>\n
The highly inadequate process of relocation (without
\nconsultation, or an offer of alternatives) coupled with the harsh
\nconduct of the city public order officials has elicited, in some
\ninstances, violent reactions. Clashes often break out between
\nsecurity personnel and becak drivers, sidewalk vendors, slum
\ndwellers and others, with an Aug. 14 crackdown resulting in the
\ndeath of a security guard.<\/p>\n
These confrontations were scenes of virtual warfare between
\nthe government and its citizens.<\/p>\n
While Governor Sutiyoso clearly denied responsibility for the
\ndisplacements, he said that those evicted were illegal residents
\nas they did not possess Jakarta identity cards and thus the
\nadministration was under no obligation to provide alternatives.<\/p>\n
\"I believe that they must have hometowns, so they should
\nreturn to their places of origin,\" he once said.<\/p>\n
He may have forgotten that, although the urban poor have been
\nliving in the capital for years, just acquiring an ID card is
\nbeyond their means due to the unofficial fees involved.<\/p>\n
Worse still is the fact that the administration never seems to
\nlearn that conviction is not the answer to all problems,
\nurbanists say.<\/p>\n
The urban poor will always find a way to eke out a living in
\nthe capital city; many experts agree on this point.<\/p>\n
The violent actions taken by the administration were \"based\"
\non City Bylaw No. 11\/1988 on public order to conduct massive
\nconfiscations and forced evictions in the name of making the city
\nclean, reducing crime and traffic jams, while preventing and
\ndiscouraging even more migrants from moving into the city from
\nthe provinces.<\/p>\n
Urbanist Marco Kusumawijaya pointed out that the bylaw
\nconsists of 33 articles, of which 22 start with \"It is forbidden
\nto ...\" It is this law that provides the basis for the annual
\noperations by the City Public Order Office.<\/p>\n
For UPC and dozens of organizations representing the urban
\npoor, it has been the cause of a perpetual struggle with the
\nadministration.<\/p>\n
For a long time, NGOs have helped them in their struggle to
\nsurvive, from staging demonstrations at the city administration
\nbuilding to protesting before members of the central government.<\/p>\n
\"We have channeled the protest to a higher level, because
\nmembers of the administration have closed their eyes to the urban
\npoor,\" said UPC coordinator Wardah Hafidz.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, NGOs also show that the 2001 city budget does not
\nside with the poor, as 66.51 percent of its total Rp 7.49
\ntrillion (later revised to Rp 8.1 trillion) goes to routine
\nexpenditure, which means to finance the operational cost of the
\ncity administration, while allocation for development
\nexpenditure, meaning for the interest of the people, is only
\n33.49 percent.<\/p>\n
Here's just one example of the irony of budget allocations:
\nfunds for the governor's needs are set at Rp 8.7 billion, while
\nthat for the development of people's nutrition is only Rp 325
\nmillion.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the reform movement doesn't touch the city
\nadministration level; on the contrary, the administration appears
\nto preserve the ways of the New Order government with its typical
\noppression in the name of public order.<\/p>\n
In this case, the urban poor are being confronted with the
\nfact that this reform era is not for them.<\/p>\n
They are still experiencing the loss of their socioeconomic
\nrights through the confiscation and destruction of their means of
\nlivelihood.<\/p>",
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