More compo for evictees urged

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The City Council has made a suggestion to the administration for it to raise the allotted compensation fund for evictees from Rp 500,000 (US$56) to Rp 5 million per family.

During a hearing with the City Public Order Agency on Thursday, councillor Mohammad Mansyur said that the current amount of compensation was far too low compared to the evictees' needs, which require finding a new place to live or returning to their home villages.

"The budget for the evictions can be submitted to the mid-year city budget, which will be drawn up in June. The public order agency should control the compensation money, not any other institution or municipality office," he said.

The hearing was called following the violent eviction of dozens of squatters in the Lorong W Barat area of Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta, on Wednesday.

The evictees hurled stones to stop dozens of public order officers, the police and military troops from bulldozing 74 houses lining a railroad track. The railroad was previously used to transport containers from Pasusu port to Tanjung Priok port.

At least 25 squatters, many of them housewives, and 11 of the public order officers were injured in the violent clashes that erupted.

"We followed all the procedures before the eviction ... the Ministry of Transportation wants to reopen the railroad," the head of North Jakarta's public order agency, Toni Budiono, was quoted as saying by Antara.

He added that the police had also arrested three people for allegedly provoking the violence as well as for possession of molotov cocktails.

Governor Sutiyoso also dismissed accusations that the officers had arbitrarily demolished the houses, forcing the evictees to stay in tents built in their former neighborhood.

"We have offered compensation but they rejected it and we have also provided temporary shelters nearby," he said Thursday.

Besides Lorong W Barat, the administration also evicted at least 175-home shanty town along the banks of the West Flood Canal in Cideng subdistrict in Gambir, as well as a group of squatters in Kampung Bali subdistrict in Tanah Abang.

Those two evictions went off in a peaceful manner because most of the people agreed to accept the compensation money and dismantled their own houses.