No more space left for city's street vendors

JAKARTA (JP): Some two million street vendors in the capital have been going through a vicious cycle every day: trading, being raided and detained, then freed, trading again, raided again, detained again, freed, and trading again.

Most of the time they are not detained, but still, their carts are confiscated by city public order officers and they have to reclaim them, at of course a much steeper rate than the official fee.

Dian, a food vendor on the city's main thoroughfare Jl. Sudirman, said that once she had to pay Rp 50,000 (US$4.5) for a crate of soft drinks confiscated by the officers.

Meanwhile, Lukman Nanda, a vendor in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta was twice detained by the officers.

He was then sent to the city-run social rehabilitation center in Kedoya, West Jakarta. The first time was for a month, the second was only for a week.

"The officers told me that I was going to be taught some skills, but I wasn't taught anything," he added.

The vendors are hunted down by the city public order officials because the city administration considers them disorderly and a disruption to traffic with their carts and kiosks cluttering the sidewalks and roads.

But experts see the problem of street vendors differently.

Debbie Prabawati, the Jakarta Social Institute's data and analysis coordinator, noted on Saturday that street vendors actually contributed billions of rupiah in revenue to the city administration's coffers.

ISJ recorded that in 1999 alone, the vendors gave some Rp 27 billion (US$2.5 million) in fees.

"This informal sector has also absorbed a huge labor force especially since the monetary crisis hit the country in mid 1997," Debbie said in a discussion held by ISJ and the Jakarta Residents Forum (FAKTA).

But ironically, she said, the sector which helps reduce unemployment and contributes a high income to the city administration, is being treated like a stepchild.

"Street vendors continue to be raided, arrested, blackmailed and their belongings damaged. It shows that their right to work has been violated," Debbie asserted.

Data obtained by ISJ shows that within the first quarter of this year, there had been 31 rights violations toward street vendors, which were mostly committed by city administration officers.

"Clearing the city streets of street vendors does not solve the problem. The city administration should organize them, not evict them," Debbie added.

Marco Kusumawijaya, an expert on city spatial planning, said that the capital has never taken into account the informal sector like street vendors in its development plan.

"Since Sukarno's era, the development in the capital has been aimed toward creating a modern image of Indonesia. Sukarno built the National Monument (Monas), Hotel Indonesia, Semanggi clover leaf and many more," Marco said in the same discussion.

Once, he added, a team from the United Nations proposed a plan for housing for the very low income groups and space for street vendors but it was turned down.

"The city administration thinks that street vendors ruin the face of the city. It just doesn't make sense. They just don't know how to organize them," Marco said.

"Worse still, there are no spaces left in the city for those vendors," he added.

In terms of regulations, Marco noted, there was a regulation requiring building owners to allocate 20 percent of their area for street vendors to trade.

"But if they cannot fulfill the regulation, they can pay a compensation fee to the city administration. This is actually the source of the space problem," he said.

Many building owners would rather pay the compensation than provide space for vendors, arguing that they were uninformed about the regulation as the city administration never made it known.

According to ISJ records, the city administration collected some Rp 15 billion in compensation fees from building owners during the period of 1993 to 2000, of which Rp 9 billion was used to build seven places for vendors.

"This compensation clause has to be abolished. Everything can be exchanged with money now. All regulations can be violated as long as you pay a fine. While the consequences often can't be solved with money," Marco asserted.

Providing special spaces for vendors would actually also benefit building owners as about 70 percent of employees working in office buildings on Jl. Sudirman, for example, buy their lunch from street vendors.

Marco suggested that street vendors form an alliance with consumers working in those office buildings so that they could sell their goods inside the buildings or inside their compound, and not on the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, Tubagus Haryo Karbyanto from the Jakarta branch of the Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta), said that the city administration and street vendors should sit together and work out a solution together.

"North Jakarta Mayor Soebagio can be an example. He's very accommodative with vendors, and he likes to go around incognito to know what is really going on in his mayoralty," Tubagus said.

As a result, he added, out of the 31 cases of rights' violations toward street vendors in the first quarter of this year, only 4 cases were found in North Jakarta. (hdn)