A game called raid

Overpopulation and urbanization problems continue to be a headache for the Jakarta administration. Today, the city is still looking for an effective and humanistic solution.

The problem is not only due to imbalanced development in many regions and the population's high mobility, but also due to the Jakarta administration's poor implementation of its operation by public order officers.

That is why there have been so many fruitless attempts to curb urbanization and why these attempts have provoked protest from various members of society.

There has been a lot of trial and error in this business and tomorrow will be no better as long as officials do not learn from experience. Officials have always given self-justifying answers to criticism and tried to defend errant public order officers.

Checking a citizen's ID card may be legal but what about prosecuting those without travel documents as happened earlier this week? Many have said it was a blatant act which inconvenienced -- if not victimized -- innocent people.

On Tuesday, 182 people were netted in an operation in West Jakarta conducted by the City Population Agency. They were tried on the spot for their failure to produce ID cards. Among those netted were students from other provinces on vacation here. They failed to produce travel documents or documents from neighborhood chiefs of where they were staying in the city.

The full legality of this week's operation has been questioned by head of the City Council and former chief of the Jakarta Police, Maj. Gen. MH Ritonga.

Reacting to criticism of this week's operation, head of the City Population Agency said "the officers who netted the people without travel documents might have committed some errors or did not have adequate knowledge about the rules". This statement does not seem very logical, especially coming from the operation's leader.

Another official said Tuesday there was no reason for people to complain about the difficulty of processing ID cards in Jakarta. But victims of the operation and other longtime residents here have long fretted about city officers imposing illegal levies on those applying for new ID cards or those applying for an extension of their old ones.

The graft has apparently been carried out so systematically that those affected can find no way to register their complaints.

If we study the operation, the problem is not in its legality but rather the method. The wrong system has been repeated and improperly applied. It seems that after 50 years of running this city, officials have yet to find a civilized way to treat its citizens.

Last year, students in Kuningan, South Jakarta, protested a midnight crackdown on allegedly illegal residents after public order officers raided boarding houses in the area without permission, forcing people into the street and rudely asking them to produce ID cards.

If we were to retrace these raids back to the 1970s we would find the list very long. It is hoped, therefore, that city authorities make this week's operation their last.

It comes as no surprise that people beg the government to conduct operations against public order officers, who like to prey on residents, especially less-privileged members of our society.