Better treatment for street vendors sought<\/p>\n
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
Analysts are calling on the city administration to manage street
\nvendors in Jakarta appropriately because since the start of the
\neconomic crisis they have served as a social safety valve for
\nmany of Jakarta's poor.<\/p>\n
Economist Didik J. Rachbini said the Jakarta administration
\nlacked policies and programs to handle street vendors in the
\ncity, and it consequently looked for a quick and easy solution by
\nconducting raids and evictions to deal with them.<\/p>\n
\"Given their immense contribution to the wellbeing of the
\ncity's population, the administration should come up with a
\nregulation that will help them to flourish,\" Rachbini told The
\nJakarta Post on Monday.<\/p>\n
He said that street vendors as part of the informal sector had
\nthrived, while the government, still beset by the multi-faceted
\ncrisis, was unable to provide jobs for the city's population.<\/p>\n
In 2002, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) revealed that out
\nof 89.7 million people employed in the country, some 62 percent
\nor 55.6 million people worked in the informal sector.<\/p>\n
Street vendors, Didik added, could even be integrated into the
\nformal sector as long as business entities were willing to
\naccommodate them.<\/p>\n
\"Offices and supermarkets in the city's high rise buildings,
\nfor example will reap the benefit if they allocate space for food
\nstalls, so that their employees can have easy access to cheap
\nfoods during lunch breaks,\" he said, adding that the two could go
\ntogether.<\/p>\n
City Bylaw No. 2\/2002 on private markets stipulates that
\nprivate shopping centers of over 500 square meters in size are
\nrequired to allocate 20 percent of their space for street
\nvendors. This ruling, however, is not properly implemented as
\nthere are only a few, if any, private shopping centers which are
\nwilling to do so.<\/p>\n
Separately, the head of urban community division of the
\nJakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH) Tubagus Haryo Karbyanto, said
\nthat the city administration had taken a wrong approach in
\ndealing with street vendors.<\/p>\n
\"City officials perceive street vendors as a source of traffic
\ncongestion and garbage that hinder the implementation of proper
\ncity planning. They, therefore, solve such problems by removing
\nthem to isolated areas,\" Karbyanto said, adding that the new
\nlocation sometimes was difficult for customers to reach.<\/p>\n
He said that instead of removing street vendors, the city
\nadministration should keep them where they were and organized
\nthem in order that they did not take too much public space.<\/p>\n
In some of the city's spots like Jatinegara in East Jakarta,
\nSenen and Tanah Abang in Central Jakarta, where street vendors
\nthrived, he demanded that the city administration remove the
\nthugs (preman) who regularly extort money from them.<\/p>\n
\"If they don't have to give money to the thugs, all the money
\nwill go the city administration and it will be a great source of
\nrevenue,\" he told the Post.<\/p>\n
Sharing the same conviction that the formal and informal
\nsector could support each other, he said: \"The likelihood of
\ncooperation is great, but the informal sector is never given a
\nchance.\"<\/p>",
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