More compo for evictees urged

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.