Personnel shortage leaves shanties in place
Personnel shortage leaves shanties in place
JAKARTA (JP): The city administration just doesn't have enough people to keep shantytowns from springing up, Toha Reno, the head of the city's public order office says.
This personnel shortage is what causes the inconsistency in the demolition of unauthorized structures, Toha, told The Jakarta Post in an interview yesterday.
Toha said his office has too small a number of staff to detect the building of shanties at an early stage. Personnel constraints also make it impossible to clear away the makeshift structures already erected by squatters along riverbanks.
The authorities have pulled down at least 3,500 shanties along river banks this year.
Last month dozens of families became homeless when officials demolished the unauthorized structures on the banks of the Ciliwung river in Pejambon and along Jl. Surabaya in Central Jakarta. Last week shantytown residents clashed with officials sent in to tear down their homes in Kedoya Utara, West Jakarta. Hundreds of shanties were destroyed in Kedoya Utara and Kembangan, also in West Jakarta, during that operation.
In the wake of that demolition, critics said force could have been avoided had the administration taken action immediately after the first shanty was built, instead of waiting until a shantytown had formed.
Governor Surjadi Soedirdja has frequently instructed the capital's mayors to take firm action whenever illegal structures appear on state property, including along riverbanks.
The supervision at districts and subdistrict levels remains weak, however.
People have voiced the suspicion that lower level officials allow the formation of slums in order to extort money from squatters, whom they threaten with eviction.
The Pejambon squatters claimed they had paid between Rp 10,000 (US$4.4) and Rp 100,000 to mayoralty officials for protection before the demolition.
Only 669
"We do not have an adequate number of personnel. Controlling riverbanks is not the only task we are responsible for," Toha said.
He said his office has 669 staffers. "Ideally, the office needs 1,440 people, meaning 33 officials for one district." The city has 43 districts.
He said the estimation of how many staffers are required is based on the population, the complexity of problems and the area covered by a given section of the capital.
"We have too many jobs to do and a very limited number of staff to do them," he complained.
The city administration now has 76,000 employees and cannot hire any more due to the central government's policy to limit the number of civil servants.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has allowed the municipal administration to accept 1,994 applicants this year. Two hundred new workers are to be hired under permanent employee status, while the remaining 1,794 will be employed on a contract basis.
Manpower data indicates that 35 percent of all of the job vacancies in Jakarta this year remain unfilled. From April to September this year, only 5,147 of 34,026 job seekers found employment. (yns)