Allowance offers find cool response among Tebet fire victims
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)