Demolition of houses on state land continues

Demolition of houses on state land continues

JAKARTA (JP): While the city mayors say they are planning to continue demolishing squatters homes on state land, they have pledged to carry out the evictions and destruction wisely.

The mayors said they will only instruct their men to pull down houses built without legal permits on the state land if they fail to make the residents see things their way.

But they will not order their personnel to burn down homes, something they've been accused of in the past, said the mayors as quoted by Antara yesterday.

Earlier, Governor Surjadi Soedirdja reminded the authorities and the public to prevent land from becoming home to new migrants, most of whom come from the less educated classes.

North Jakarta Mayor Suprawito admitted that there are still lots of illegal houses built on state land in his area, especially along riverbanks and railway tracks.

"But we'll never burn them even if the houses are made of paper," he said.

East Jakarta Mayor Sudarsono concurred with Suprawito, saying that his personnel have managed to bring both old and newly-built illegal houses on state land under control.

West Jakarta Mayor Sutardjianto insisted that he will not tolerate any effort to occupy city land.

He also denied press reports saying that he had instructed his personnel to burn a total of 321 shanties occupied by hundreds of scavengers at a waste dump area at Srengseng Kelapa Dua in Kembangan district recently.

"I never instructed my personnel to burn down these makeshift houses," Sutardjianto said.

Central Jakarta Mayor Abdul Kahfi said his office will follow every legal and administrative rule in handling the illegal shanties in his area.

"If we fail to handle this problem quickly, there will be more and more huts built on other empty state plots in the future. Therefore we should be able to tackle this nagging problem once and for all," he said. (bsr)