City 'should optimize' bylaw on population

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Home Affairs Yogie S.M. urged the city administration yesterday to strictly enforce the existing city bylaw on population, instead of making a new law to cope with the city's overwhelming population.

According to the minister, the capital's population problem is due to the city's failure to effectively implement city bylaw No. 1/1996 on population.

"What is important is that the administration should optimize the existing regulation which has the capacity to restrict the population.

"The problem here (which limits the city's ability to check population growth) is that the existing bylaw has always been broken," Yogie told reporters after attending a post-Idul Fitri gathering held at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, East Jakarta, by Sundanese living in the city.

The minister, however, refused to comment on Governor Sutiyoso's request to the central government to help formulate a new law on population restriction which, in turn, would help the municipality solve the chronic problem.

Sutiyoso said last week that the city badly needed such a law because the population would otherwise further increase.

The city's population is officially 9.7 million, but others estimate it to be about 11 million.

The number increases regularly with the annual influx of about 300,000 migrants after the Idul Fitri holiday.

Sutiyoso said the city's population was alarming as the city's available land continuously decreased due to development.

Attractive city

Yogie said it was difficult to prohibit migrants from entering the city because "people are attracted to come here as everything is provided".

When asked to comment on Sutiyoso's idea on making a new law, the director of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, Apong Herlina, said any such law would be against human rights as it would ban people entering the city.

"Everyone has the right to live and work anywhere. The idea to produce such a law does not accommodate public opinion," she said.

According to Apong, the core of the problem is not in making a law but the chronic economical and development gaps between big cities and villages.

"The government should create a policy that stops a concentration of development in big cities.

"As long as the core problem cannot be solved, no regulation will work as people will always look for loopholes to be freed from difficulties of living in villages," Apong said.

Yogie strongly refuted her opinion.

"It's not true, for a long time the distribution of development has been spread evenly from east to west," Yogie said.

As in previous years, the city this year will transmigrate some 1,572 families consisting of 8,000 people living in slum areas in the city to outer islands.

An official from the Regional Transmigration Office, Sudihardjo, said Thursday the families would be moved to 11 destinations: 112 families would go to Aceh, 20 families to North Sumatra, 15 families to West Sumatra, 357 families to Riau, 125 to Jambi, 121 to Bengkulus, 319 to South Sumatra, 297 to West Kalimantan, 123 to Central Kalimantan, 16 to East Kalimantan, 15 to South Kalimantan and 52 families to Irian Jaya.

"They are low-income residents who live in slums here. Hopefully this program will improve their lives. After all, it's better to have a decent home away from here than to live in slum areas in such pitiful conditions," he said.

The goal of the program is to give a better chance to people living along riverbanks, under bridges or in slum areas to earn a decent living, he said.

"I understand that it is hard for us to promote the idea to the people. But we have to try to develop this program." (ind/edt)