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.