City discrimination

City discrimination

The Jakarta administration's inability to provide its citizens
with jobs and the increasing hardship in the city have apparently
doubled fears about the influx of new migrants after the Idul
Fitri holiday. No wonder the administration feels it is necessary
to once again close the city to migrants, a meaningless gesture
that is impossible to enforce and something we hear every year.

Governor Sutiyoso has recently said that those wishing to live
in Jakarta after the holidays must be equipped with
identification cards, letters from local authorities and others
of good conduct from the police.

Screening for "illegals" will be held at bus terminals, train
stations and seaports to ensure that all newcomers have the
necessary papers and skills to stay in Jakarta.

Official records of the Central Statistic Agency (BPS)
indicate that between 200,000 and 250,000 job seekers from the
regions enter the capital a few days after the Idul Fitri
festivities. Observers have long doubted the official figures,
which appear to be almost the same annually.

The idea to close Jakarta to new migrants was initiated by
Governor Ali Sadikin in 1970, given that urbanization had reached
alarming and unhealthy levels by the standards of the day.
Subdistrict and neighborhood community heads were instructed to
reject newcomers unless they had already secured jobs. Later the
governor finally admitted that the policy would not work.

Nevertheless other governors -- Tjokropanolo, R. Soeprapto,
Wiyogo Atmodarminto and Surjadi Soedirdja -- followed Sadikin's
move -- representing a collective failure of imagination.

The autonomy laws, which are supposed to encourage regions to
develop and in doing so create employment, have apparently failed
to prevent job-seekers from going to an already teeming
metropolis. The capital remains a magnet for people from other
regions and the economic downturn in rural areas has worsened
this situation.

Dilapidated infrastructure, constant traffic congestion, a
shortage of cheap housing and the city's growing population are
the reasons behind Sutiyoso's creation of a bylaw to control
urbanization.

With the Bylaw No. 4 signed on June 1 last year, the governor
is now sure that his policy to close Jakarta to newcomers is
lawful.

It states that every citizen, newcomer and visitor must report
their presence in Jakarta to the head of Population and Civil
Registration Agency. Another article rules every visitor must
report to local authorities within 14 days of arriving in
Jakarta. While yet another, requires newcomers of over 17 years
of age to obtain a KIP identification card from the neighborhood
where they are staying. Those found violating the regulations are
subject to three month's jail or Rp 5 million fine.

These articles do not sit well with the administration's plan
to conduct operations at bus terminals, train stations and
seaports.

How can the authorities arrest people getting off a bus just
because they lack letters from village heads or notices of "good
conduct" from the police? Do people now need to have a letter
from the village head or acknowledgement from the police just to
leave their village?

Isn't every citizen in this country free to move, work and
live anywhere within the country as guaranteed by the
Constitution?

The closed-door policy run by the Jakarta administration is a
blatant denial of a basic human right, and its implementation
will violate the Constitution.

Given all the failures of his predecessors to make this policy
work, Sutiyoso should have been quite aware that closing the
capital to new migrants does not answer the city's problems. Two
years ago, Sutiyoso made it clear he was determined to push ahead
with the controversial plan. Nevertheless, his persistence is
fruitless. The Jakarta City Council, seen as a rubber-stamp body
for the governor, has never submitted any new or valuable ideas
about how to control the population in the city, yet its members
were happy to endorse Bylaw No. 4.

The city of Jakarta belongs to the nation and must develop
into an open and modern city. As the country's most cosmopolitan
cultural melting pot, acceptance of newcomers would be a good
precedent to set for the rest of the country. New migrants would
likely enrich the cultural diversity in this city of more than 10
million people.

What the capital really needs to deal with the effects of
urbanization is a strong and credible leadership with a better
development vision. It does not need an administration that
flouts human rights by closing the city down and creating new
forms of discrimination.