Becak drivers angry, burned two cars

JAKARTA (JP): Some 500 becak (pedicab) drivers and residents went on a rampage as city public order officials held a simultaneous becak-free operation in the city's five mayoralties on Tuesday evening.

They turned one official car of the city public order agency and a truck of the city sanitary agency upside down before they set the two vehicles on fire.

Similar incident happened in Gunung Sahari area in Central Jakarta, where angry mob pelted stones to a public minivan.

No casualties were reported in the incidents.

A police officer said the incident happened as some pedicab drivers, who reside on Jl. Karanganyar in Central Jakarta, strongly opposed and challenged the public order officials who conducted the raid on the nearby Jl. Mangga Besar Raya in West Jakarta.

"They were angry because they were prevented from operating along the Jl. Mangga Besar Raya area," West Jakarta Police precinct chief Col. Adji Rustam Ramdja.

He said he deployed some 250 policemen and 50 civilian guards to help secure the operation.

An official at the Taman Sari police subprecinct said it was not clear whether the drivers were mad because of the sentence imposed by the Central Jakarta District Court on Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) coordinator Wardah Hadifz's earlier on Tuesday, or they were angry because they had paid levies to the public order officials, but were still raided. (ylt/edt/imn)