Overpopulation remains a threat for Jakarta

This week, the Jakarta administration will launch a large-scale crackdown on unskilled migrants who have entered the city after the Idul Fitri holiday. Governor Sutiyoso's administration has blamed migrants as the source of many urban problems. Some observers, meanwhile, believe the crackdown could be in violation of the Constitution, which states that the country's land and its resources are "assets for the people's prosperity" and that every Indonesian citizen has the right to "live and work in human dignity". In this first article in a series on the issue, The Jakarta Post's Damar Harsanto examines whether migration is really at the root of the city's woes.

With a current population estimated from 10-13 million, some analysts estimate Jakarta could be growing by up to 250,000 people a year.

Many of the migrants to the city often come after the Idul Fitri holiday, further squeezing an already overcrowded, dirty city, which 2004 figures say has a population density of 14,642 people per square kilometer.

As a consequence, public zones such as parks, riverbanks and the spaces under overpasses have been turned into slum housing by squatters, while road shoulders, pedestrian sidewalks and bridges are lined with migrants who earn their living by becoming street vendors.

Lured by dreams of good money and a better life, every new influx puts an increased strain on the city's transportation, schools, hospitals and water supplies.

The waste from riverside slums and larger industrial polluters has made Jakarta Bay a toxic dump, and the black muck from each of the city's 13 polluted rivers is increasing every year, regularly killing thousands of fish.

Worse still, more than 60 percent of city's residents, many of them squatters, rely on groundwater supplies for bathing because infrastructure to deliver treated tap water is sorely lacking.

Sutiyoso has repeatedly emphasized that the increased numbers of migrants were preventing his administration from solving the many urban problems in the capital.

"We cannot improve the lives of city residents should people continue to flood into Jakarta ... We have to inform those people that Jakarta is already overcrowded now," he said.

But urban activists believe it is not the migrants who are the main cause of the city's problems.

They blame the massive uncontrolled development in the city, including the growth of improperly planned shopping malls, commercial premises and upmarket housing estates. These they say are crowding out green spaces, increasing groundwater pollution and displacing the poor, giving them nowhere to go but roadsides and riverbanks.

There were a total of 12 new malls completed in the city in 2004 and 11 more are currently being constructed. However, while the middle classes and businesspeople are catered for, public housing projects for low-income residents are almost non-existant and substandard accomodation, traffic jams and mounting garbage are now regular features of many peoples' daily lives.

According to city watchdog the Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) these planning problems will burden the city for years to come because of the glaring lack of professionalism in the administration.

"The administration should humbly admit that it has not been serious or professional enough in dealing with these problems and is now looking for a scapegoat," Fakta chairman Azas Tigor Nainggolan said.