A place for the poor

The recent forcible eviction of squatters from a slum on a North Jakarta riverbank became a national issue when the National Commission on Human Rights got involved. The City Public Order Office has done such operations for decades and, up until now, there had been no strong reaction on a national level.

The commission, in a rare reaction to municipal problems, registered a protest with the city administration against the eviction. But in the eyes of the general public, such city operations yield very little positive results because every year more and more migrants come to the city from poor rural areas. They have neither a clear destination nor any skills. Once they are here they occupy green belts, state-owned land, open public facilities and vacant space along railway tracks.

In facing this latent headache, the city administration seems to have experienced repeated failures, and it finally lost its patience. But the city public order officers have gone about their work in a very insensitive way. On the other hand, the squatters feel they have to fight to the end to defend their slums because the only life they know is at stake. So, clashes have been common in the various public order operations. Who is to blame?

In this case it is quite strange to hear that some people expect the city authorities to halt its campaign and take positive steps for the welfare of the squatters. The steps, as voiced by the National Commission on Child Protection in a meeting with the city governor on Tuesday, include decent housing, security and education for the squatters' children.

It is highly improbable that the demands will be met, since the administration failed in the past to provide decent dwellings for squatters. It has also been city policy to block the arrival of unskilled migrants because Jakarta has very limited space and the presence of even more unemployed people will only increase the growth of slums and cause public insecurity. And when taking into account the gloomy prospect of the national economic development program -- in which the rural areas take a backseat -- the job to curb the flow of migrants to Jakarta could take another two or three decades.

Even in the late 1960s the government was inconsistent in its approach to keeping the population of Jakarta under control. Governor Ali Sadikin, a marine lieutenant general who started the crusade to make Jakarta a living hell for unemployed migrants between 1966 and 1977, was quite successful with his iron-fisted style, but he was replaced by another general, Tjokropranolo, whose policy was more humane. Tjokropranolo -- who called his style a "religious and socialistic" approach -- during his five- year term opened the door for migrants from rural areas, saying they came to make ends meet, not to steal. From that time on the campaigns to deter squatters have been erratic.

The city public order officers must take some of the blame for the failure to curb the number of squatters in Jakarta, for they have made the best use of the campaigns for their own ends. According to sources at the administration, the officers had let the squatters unlawfully occupy lands in their respective districts until the number of them reached alarming proportions. Then they started large-scale and expensive operations, giving the officers the opportunity to put more money into their pockets.

Governor Sutiyoso and his predecessors may have been aware of this dirty game, but considered it small time and took no action. So public order operations have been needed from to time until, finally at the Tuesday meeting, Sutiyoso was confronted by the idea of trying to build low-cost apartments for the evicted people. In the past the city administration built apartments when slums were burned down, but it failed to overcome the real problem because the apartments were more suited to people of a higher economic class and the streets between the buildings were large enough for a car to pass so that ex-squatters who were allotted a place rented it to people better off than themselves.

So, in the future the new apartments should be very basic and the alleys between apartment blocks should be adequate only for motorcycles. And the governor would do well to evict corrupt public order officers from his government.