7,000 stalls owned by Pasar Jaya empty

JAKARTA (JP): Out the 91,100 stalls owned by city-owned market management company PD Pasar Jaya at 152 traditional markets in the city, 7,000 are left unoccupied, an official of the firm said on Friday.

Spokesman of PD Pasar Jaya, Lihardin Sipayung, welcomed the many unoccupied kiosks were caused mainly by the fact that their locations were no so strategic.

"We've frequently offer the empty stalls to prospective traders, but they the offer was turned down," he said.

Djafar Badjeber, head of Commission B for economic affairs of the city council, suggested that in order to solve the problem, it was time now to mobilize street vendors scattering throughout the city to move to the empty stalls.

But the company should give a kind of incentive, for example, by exempting the vendors from paying the rent. "They are required to pay only the security and electricity fees," he said.

Lihardin welcomed Djafar's idea on the relocation of street vendors, but the problem was not as easy as one expected.

"We used to allow the tenants to occupy the stalls without paying renting fees for the first three months," he said.

"But because they are forced to find as many customers as possible, they tend to go where the prospective customers gather," Lihardin said. (ivy)