Locals on outside looking in at villa residents

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Although the rich have built thousands of villas in the Puncak tourist resort in West Java, local residents have failed to benefit. In fact, the villas have impoverished them.

The presence of the villas and the rich has encouraged local residents to sell their lands. Partly, because they could not resist the lure of the lucre.

As the lands provided their livelihood and it was difficult to find alternative means of income, they became poorer.

Abidin, a resident of Tugu Utara villa, Cisarua subdistrict, Bogor, West Java, said that since the 1970s, the villagers had sold their lands as the rich newcomers were willing to pay top dollar. He could not, however, remember the exact price of land at that time.

He said that most of the villagers used the money, not to secure their futures, but on immediate needs like replacing their wooden homes with concrete ones.

"In the past, the villagers never found it difficult to feed members of their family as they still had land to plant various kinds of vegetables and other cash crops," Abidin said.

"After they sold their lands, many of them became poorer than before although they have better houses. Many of them even find difficulties in fulfilling their routine expenditure for food," said Abidin, who works in Jakarta and returns home every weekend.

Oyang, 60, Abidin's father, said that his grandfather used to have a large plot of land, but it had nearly all been sold. "My grandfather's land was no less than seven hectares," Oyang told The Jakarta Post.

Oyang said five hectares of the land had been sold by his grandfather while the ownership of the remaining land was being disputed.

"So we have no more land, except the two hectares which is still being disputed," said Oyang.

According to Abidin, the village head and his associates were those who gained most from the sale of villagers' lands and from the constructions of villas.

He added that every land transaction was done with the help of the village head, who got a certain amount of money from each land transactions.

Abidin even said that many village heads and their associates became land brokers.

Tugu Utara village head Jajat Sudrajat admitted that he got a fee from every land transaction but he refused to say how much he got.

Jajat, who has been village head since last September, said that the state lands were sold by cultivators. He said that he could only make official records of the state land transactions without issuing any legal document. And from such services, he received a "commission" from the buyers.

He admitted that during his six-month tenure he had recorded eight transactions of state lands from the illegal occupants to other parties.

"If I recorded 50 transactions of land, then I am rich now. People said that I've become a village head when only bones are left to deal with," he said.

But, one villager who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Post that candidates seeking to become village heads were willing to spend hundreds of millions of rupiah to get elected as they believed that they could regain their money in a short time.

Some other local people also said that they did not benefit from the presence of the villas. They said that only few of them were hired as workers to construct the villas or as security men or domestic help.

"We are not invited to join them. Security men or the domestics are usually taken by the owners from other regions," said Yudi, 20, whose house is only 500 meters from a complex where tens of villas are located.

The villas, including one owned by Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso, are built in Citameang, Tugu Utara subdistrict, Cisarua district, Bogor regency. They are among hundreds built illegally on state land in the Bogor and Cianjur subdistricts.

Yudi, like many other young people from the area, has no job after graduating from junior high school.

According to him, there are only some 15 families in the Citameang area, but none of them are employed by the villa owners.

Suminta, 50, said that the locals were also not involved in the construction of the villas as the construction company used workers from other regions.

"I and my two children had to go to Jakarta to work as a construction worker, although many villas were being constructed here several years ago," said Suminta, who lives 500 metres from the complex.

Suminta has three children, two of whom still live with him.

"I do not care about the villas as they cannot benefit my family. I will lose nothing if they are demolished," said Suminta's wife, Haryati, who said that his family had been living in the area since 1989 when the villas were constructed.