Allowance offers find cool response among Tebet fire victims
JAKARTA (JP): Most West Tebet residents whose houses were razed by fire two weeks ago still oppose the city administration's plan to build apartments on the fire site.
As of yesterday, almost none of them had picked up the housing rent allowance offered by the authority.
"Thus far, only two families have picked up the allowances," Imran M. Hasan, chief of the West Tebet neighborhood, told the Jakarta Post yesterday afternoon.
The neighborhood started to distribute the allowances Wednesday.
M. Yanis, spokesman for the South Jakarta mayoralty administration, told The Post that the governor (Surjadi Soedirdja) had agreed to give the fire victims only a Rp 400,000 (US$186) allowance, instead of Rp 500,000 ($232) as many officials had earlier estimated.
The allowance was to be used by each family to rent temporary housing elsewhere for a year pending the completion of the apartments.
There are 1,000 members of 230 families living in the one- hectare plot which was set ablaze on May 11.
"Through the mass media we urge them (fire victims) to quickly pick the allowance they are entitled to. The decision of the mayoralty administration to build the apartments is final," Yanis said.
The allowance was distributed at the West Tebet neighborhood chief's office.
Sultom, one of the fire victims who strongly opposed the apartment plan, earlier said the allowance was too low compared to the current housing rent.
"We could only live on that money for a few weeks, not a year," he said.
Yanis said the municipality cannot offer a higher allowance due to limited funds.
"Even the proposal of giving Rp 500,000 was turned down by the governor's office due to financial constraints," he said
Marketplace
Repeating what Onky Sukasah, the chief of the City Housing Office, said earlier, Yanis explained that the city administration will build three blocks of apartments in the slum area, each with 120 units measuring 18 square meters each.
Each block will consist of five stories, including four stories for residences, with the basement assigned to be a mini- marketplace.
"These will be the first apartments provided with a marketplace," Yanis said.
Yanis said, in principle, each family will be entitled only to one unit, but those who formerly had large plots or who have many family members are entitled to two units.
"We are making an inventory of the family members who lived in the area and the sizes of the plots they occupied," he said.
He said so far the city administration has not decided the price of each unit or the installment to be paid by each family.
In response to the determination of most fire victims to rebuild their burned houses, he said the mayoralty had issued a demolition order on Wednesday which was valid for 24 hours.
Although the deadline has passed, the mayoralty has reportedly restrained from adopting such measures.
"We will wait for the controversy to cool down," said Yanis.
Based on the insistence of most fire victims to rebuild their houses, analysts anticipate the row between the mayoralty and the fire victims will end up in conflicts, reminiscent of what happened in a slum area in Tanah Tinggi district, Central Jakarta, in August last year.
Similar to the West Tebet case, the municipality determined to build apartments in Tanah Tinggi after a fire burned the area.
The residents, armed with stones and boards, defended their plot, warring for an entire day against 500 military members armed with anti-riot apparatus. (jsk)