Jakarta is not a dream city, governor says
JAKARTA (JP): Jakarta is not a dream city and many people who migrate here fail to make it and become a burden on the administration, Governor Surjadi Soedirdja said yesterday.
Surjadi hammered home the message during a meeting with model officials from regional administrations, saying that they should stop encouraging people from their provinces to come to Jakarta.
"Never see Jakarta as the city of dreams. Many people come from the countryside without sufficient skills to survive. They end up becoming beggars and vagrants," he said during the meeting with the officials, who are here for the celebration of the 52nd independence anniversary.
"I appeal to you not to turn Jakarta into a city of failures," Surjadi said, pointing out that many migrants who failed to make it ended up living under bridges or in shacks along river banks.
The city administration no longer tolerated such living because Jakarta, as the country's capital, had to maintain its cleanliness, he said.
"We can't do that if villagers keep coming and adding to the city's burden," he said.
The administration has been sending beggars and vagrants back to their villages. Some were first sent on a three-month vocational training course organized by the Jakarta Social Services Agency.
Surjadi said that preventing beggars and vagrants accumulating in Jakarta was difficult because they had their own syndicates of helpers.
The administration found it hard to track them down and many of those who were sent home kept coming back, he said. "They seem to have grown fond of their profession."
Highest population
Jakarta has the highest population density in Indonesia, ranging between 40,000 and 80,000 people per square kilometer. "Such a condition causes many social problems, and one of them is an increasing crime rate," he said.
The governor denied the administration treated beggars inhumanely.
"We pity them, but we can't possibly tolerate the problems they bring here," he said, adding that the Social Services Agency spends some Rp 500 million each month on sheltering, training and sending beggars back to their home villages.
"Don't call us inhuman, because what they do for a living is inhuman and causes a burden on other people," he said.
The governor was responding to criticisms of the rough way Jakarta Public Order Office personnel had treated beggars and vagrants in recent operations.
Surjadi praised the model officials for their dedication to serving society.
Representing Jakarta yesterday were Kelapa Dua Subdistrict Chief Widodo, librarian Luwat Manurung of the Jakarta Teachers Training Institute, and Arsyad, the chief of the Village Community Tenacity Institution in Ciracas, East Jakarta. (07)