Like it or not, Tebet victims get apartments

JAKARTA (JP): The City Council and the governor's office said yesterday that the apartment project for Tebet fire victims will still be built, despite their protests they don't want to live in an apartment.

"The funds are already available. We hope that we can build it soon," said Onky Sukasah, chief of the City Housing Office after a hearing with the City Council yesterday.

Onky was in the company of Zainuddin, deputy to South Jakarta mayor.

However, the city administration is facing problems even before ground is broken on the construction site, namely, the area residents have rejected the proposal and are in the midst of rebuilding their houses.

The nearly 1,000 fire victims had their 230 premises in a slum area of West Tebet subdistrict, South Jakarta burned by a three- hour fire on Wednesday morning.

Despite the pleas of the South Jakarta mayoralty administration, many rebuilt their premises after the fire and an increasing number of people are doing so every day.

Meetings were arranged by the South Jakarta mayoralty in the wake of the fire to brief residents on the city administration's low-cost apartment plan. However, the meetings did not encourage them to drop their rebuilding efforts.

Goodwill

Sutarno, chairman of the City Council commission on administrative affairs, called the city administration to handle the Tebet issue through persuasive measures, not by force.

"We hope the executive branch give them some directives properly that they (the fire victims) can understand the city administration's goodwill," Sutarno told reporters.

Earlier, Sutarno said that area residents were loath to accept the apartment plan because they had received conflicting information about it from municipal officials.

Some officials had said that, under the city master plan, the fire site is slated to be a green zone and, as such, could not used for housing. They also said that the planned apartment was to be built elsewhere.

However, other officials said the fire site was slated to be a "low-coefficient area," that is, land which may be used for housing providing that 80 percent is left undeveloped.

They said that on those grounds, the municipality could build an apartment complex there.

To clear up any confusion, the city officials announced at the yesterday's hearing the fire site was slated for low-coefficient area.

"Everything is clear now. Apartments may be built there on the condition 80 percent of the land at minimum is left undeveloped for parks," said Sutarno.

One year

Onky explained the planned apartments would consist of three blocks, each with 120 units. Each block will have five stories, including four stories for residences, with the basement slated to be a 'marketplace', ".. so residents can continue their profession in the same place," said Onky.

Around 100 of the fire victims were reportedly traders, who used to operate in the fire site.

Pending the completion of the apartment, each family of the fire victims would get funds from the city administration which they can use to pay rent on their temporary houses.

The so-called "rent fund", whose exact amount had yet to be decided, could be around Rp 500,000 (US$232) per year, said Onky and Sutarno.

"The apartment is scheduled to finish in one year. The sooner the fire victims accept the plan, the better," said Onky. (jsk)