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.