Jakarta should be closed for outsider, Sutiyoso says

Jakarta should be closed for outsider, Sutiyoso says

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Pointing to massive influxes of people to Jakarta especially
after holidays like Idul Fitri, along with the social problems
they bring with them, Governor Sutiyoso has said he will issue a
bylaw to reduce urbanization.

Early next year, the city administration will start discussion
on the proposal, he said.

"Each year after the holiday season, we receive between
200,000 to 250,000 newcomers," Sutiyoso said after meeting with
President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

"Jakarta is already facing a land shortage," he continued, "so
it is necessary to figure out a way to prevent more."

Jakarta has long been the dream destination for villagers from
across the archipelago, particularly Java. People often come to
the city to try their luck at improving their lot, since they
often lead a hard life back home.

However, this has created social problems in the capital,
because most of them come without skills to support their lives
while they were in the city.

This adds to the burdens of the city administration, said
Sutiyoso. One of the most obvious problems caused by the
phenomenon has been the emergence of slums in many places,
including riverbanks.

Recently, City Public Order officers, backed by regular police
officers, have forcibly evicted thousands from the slums. They
are ordered to leave without proper compensation on the grounds
that they did not own the land, and that they did not have
Jakarta ID cards.

According to the latest census from the Central Bureau of
Statistics, Jakarta's population at night is more than 8.3
million. During the day, meanwhile, workers from the city's
buffer zones of Tangerang, Bekasi and Depok bring the number up
considerably to 11 million people.

Each year during the holiday seasons of Idul Fitri, around
2.3 million people leave Jakarta to their hometown, and many of
them bring their relatives to look for better a living in the
capital.

"Currently, we do not have such a regulation to minimize the
urbanization, so many people could enter Jakarta freely, without
clear purpose and add burden to the capital," he added.

In the 1970s, Governor Ali Sadikin said that it was necessary
to ban unskilled newcomers so that the city could be better
managed. His words were never manifested in formal regulation.

"This planned bylaw will be the first to regulate this
matter," Sutiyoso said.

He admitted that it would be difficult to establish such a
bylaw, because it is the basic rights of Indonesian citizens to
go to any part of the country. On the other hand, he
acknowledged, it is also a fact that Jakarta is already clearly
overloaded.

"We all know that most of them came to Jakarta without
anything, and then send their children to become beggars in the
street," the governor said. "Things will be very difficult if we
continue to face these problems."

He did not, however, provide a clear timetable to discuss the
planned urban bylaw, as his tenure expires in 2002.

In past years, the city administration has tried to stem the
influx by checking the ID cards of people who arrived in
intercity bus terminals after the Idul Fitri holidays. Those who
were unskilled and had no one to support them in the city were
told to return home.

Sutiyoso, however, conceded that such operations did not work,
while critics said it did not have a legal basis, and violated
human rights.

"The new bylaw will set certain requirements for those who
want to come to the city, such as (disclosing) the names of the
people who will support them, or their intention of coming to the
capital," Sutiyoso said.

He did not elaborate on how the bylaw could be implemented.