Number of illegal street vendors falls sharply

JAKARTA (JP): The number of illegal street vendors operating in the city dropped from about 88,000 in 1993 to 54,000 at present, an official said yesterday.

Aris Djazuli, head of the small-scale business Improvement project, told reporters that the sharp decline was due to the fact that many voluntarily moved to Jakarta's buffer zones: Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi.

The success in the development of the buffer zones has attracted many vendors, who frequently face proceedings against them from the land and order officers, to move there, he said.

"They moved to those cities, managed to earn a better living and buy houses or land," Aris said.

Aris also said the vendors can operate more freely there because law and order enforcement in the three cities is not as strict as in Jakarta, where they are forced to continuously keep an eye on a possible operation to arrest them or confiscate their merchandise.

He said the ongoing operations, launched by the law and order officers, are intended to discourage illegal street vendors, whose numbers are five times more than that of the legal ones.

Another reason for the operations, according to Aris, is because the city is short of locations to accommodate all of the illegal street vendors.

"There are about 12,000 legal street vendors who operate in 361 locations throughout the city. These street vendors are registered and given permits to operate in those locations," Aris said.

In Central Jakarta there are 87 locations, North Jakarta 89, South Jakarta 58, East Jakarta 51 and West Jakarta 76.

Aris acknowledged that most illegal street vendors in the city fall victim to unsavory characters demanding daily "shares" from them.

There are many people involved in such practices, including hoodlums, sometimes police officers and even city administration officials themselves, he said.

"It is true that officials from subdistricts and district offices participate in that practice even though the city administration has no policy on the collection of fees from illegal street vendors," Aris said.

He expressed concern over the complexity in handling the illegal vendors as, whenever the law and order officers try to arrest them, they claim that they have paid a number of fees to the city administration.

He reiterated that the city administration collects fees only from registered street vendors. From the fees of between Rp 500 (22 US cents) and Rp 2,000 per day, the city collects Rp 1.5 billion per year.

"The city administration has appointed certain officials to be in charge of collecting the fees every day," Aris said.

Many of the collectors, however, cheat by not turning all of the collected funds over to the City Revenue Office, Aris added. (yns)