Evicted residents demand compensation from landownder

Evicted residents demand compensation from landownder

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Camping on the rubble of their old houses on Jl. Pipa in Sunter
Jaya, North Jakarta, the residents fear two things as night
falls: the rain and the police who, on previous nights, forced
them to vacate the land.

"We will insist on staying here until the person who claims to
own the land gives us the compensation we were promised for our
houses," Mahfud, a factory worker who lived in the area for four
years, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

With makeshift tents made from plastic sheets and cardboard
boxes, about 80 families are living amid their destroyed homes in
a little area surrounded by a three-meter tall wall.

After losing all their belongings, they now depend on donated
rice and instant noodles for their food.

The residents are bewildered by the North Jakarta mayoralty's
decision to bulldoze their houses last Tuesday, with the dispute
over the ownership of the land still in the hands of the Jakarta
High Court.

"There was no court verdict ordering us to leave the land.
Moreover, we bought the land back in 1998 and 1999 from the
workers here, who said their boss was halting plans to build an
office for the Timor car company on the land," Mahfud said.

He was referring to PT Timor Putra Nasional, owned by Hutomo
Putra Mandala, the youngest son of former president Soeharto. At
the time, Hutomo held the right to import Korean-made KIA cars
and sell them here under the name Timor.

The 4.5-hectare plot of land known as Catering hamlet, named
after the profession of the first owner of the land, was handed
to the now-defunct Bank Surya in 1997 by Anton Tjahayadikarta,
the second person to own the land.

According to the North Jakarta office of the National Land
Agency, the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) took over
ownership of the land in 1999, along with other assets of Bank
Surya.

It is not clear whether IBRA sold the land, but residents said
that Anton held several meetings with subdistrict chief Sunyoto,
in which he promised to pay Rp 500,000 (US$58) in compensation to
the owners of each of the 140 houses in the hamlet for vacating
the area.

Residents of the hamlet were not given notice that their
houses were to be destroyed on Tuesday. One resident was
hospitalized when he was hit be debris from one of the destroyed
houses.

"There was no notice of the eviction. We were not given time
to save our belongings before they smashed our houses," one
resident, Marsum, said.

He said the North Jakarta public order officers who evicted
them took everything, including television sets and piggy banks.

The public order officers also took the electricity and water
meters that proved the residents were customers of the state-
owned electricity company and the city-owned tap water company,
he said.

"We were electricity and water customers. That is proof that
we were legal residents," Marsum said.