Fire in the slums, displace Jakarta migrants

Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

She wanted to wear the dress for Idul Fitri, but only two days before the holiday, it was burned along with other valuables inside her parents' house along with dozens of other semi- permanent buildings in the densely populated Cipulir area of South Jakarta.

Eight-year-old Novrianti said nothing about the dress or asked her parents to buy a new one as she saw with her own eyes the damage caused by the fire that destroyed her neighborhood.

"Nothing's left. Savings, clothes, documents and even the house are all gone," said Salim, Novrianti's father.

Salim, a father of five, worked for his neighbor who owned a bakery.

Like other fire victims, Salim could only expect help and donations and it never crossed his mind to question who was to blame.

The fire in Cipulir, which occurred Friday last week had left some 250 people homeless and inflicted hundreds of billions of rupiah in material losses. The cause of the fire, which took place when Muslims were performing their tarawih (night Ramadhan) prayer, was unknown. An official said it may have been caused by an electrical short, while residents maintained that it was caused by irresponsible firecracker-throwers.

However, fire in such slum areas is not an unusual occurrence. There were many fires in the capital in the past year and most of them were in the slums and densely populated areas. No government institution has apparently been able to take necessary actions to prevent such incidents.

One day after Idul Fitri, dozens of houses on Jl. Kembangan Tiga, Kwitang, Central Jakarta, were also razed by fire while many of the owners were celebrating the holidays in their villages.

A spokesman from the City Fire Agency Johny Pangaribuan said his agency could not do anything except to extinguish the fires. Suggesting to people that they should not erect unsafe buildings in densely populated, fire-prone areas was beyond his authority.

"It looks like we are just cleaning the same garbage everyday but I think the people (fire victims) know that is the risk of living in the capital which is already overcrowded. Fire is one of the risks they face if they live in a densely populated slum," Johny said.

However he added "it could have been prevented if certain agencies really do their homework to revamp Jakarta's residential areas."

He did not suggest who might have the authority to do that, but did say it would be a daunting task for the city government to undertake.

Jakarta is now home to more than 8.3 million residents officially, perhaps millions more are living in slums and unaccounted for, and the DKI province has the highest population density in the nation with an astonishing 12,628 people per square kilometer.

Meanwhile back in Cipulir, the homeless are now sheltering at nearby schools as students are on holiday. But nobody knows where they will go when the schools resume?

"It will take time to rebuild our houses but at least we have a plot of land here where we can build a makeshift shelter," said Munijah, who claims to have lived in the area since the 1980's.

Many of the residents claimed that the land belonged to them and only a few of them were renting houses from others.

"I will probably return to my hometown. I don't know what to do here," another resident, 30-year-old Andri, said while begging for handouts from passers by.