Fire in the slums, displace Jakarta migrants

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.