Residents cancel kite protest near airport

TANGERANG (JP): Residents living near Soekarno-Hatta International Airport canceled plans to fly 400 kites on Monday to protest airport management's perceived disinterest in employing them.

"There's no flying kite protest," housewife Ibu Musli said on Monday evening.

As of Tuesday, none of the residents of Karang Sari, Karang Anyar, Neglasari, Rawa Rengas and Rawa Burung villages offered an explanation as to why the protest was canceled.

Protesting Local Tangerang Residents chairman Sarmili Ari, who announced the protest last Thursday, could not be reached for comment.

According to an executive at Soekarno-Hatta, Arifin Razak, airport management firm PT Angkasa Pura II had met with and asked village chiefs to help prevent the protest.

Sarmili, who claimed to represent 570 unemployed local residents, including a number with university degrees, said earlier his group would protest Angkasa Pura's reluctance to employ locals by flying some 400 kites above the airport on Monday, which was also the company's anniversary.

"In a letter to representatives of the firm, we told them that people living around the airport had great difficulty finding jobs at the airport," Sarmili announced on Thursday.

"Any job would do, even if we had to cut the grass. But the letter was not answered," he said.

According to Sarmili, the residents were angry upon learning that 90 percent of the airport's employees were not Tangerang residents, but secured their jobs through "special connections".

As of Tuesday, a number of plainclothes officers were seen around Soekarno-Hatta, preventing people from approaching the airport complex.

The officers asked a group of reporters to move away from the airport.

According to Arifin, a number of domestic and international airlines have complained about kites flying over the airport.

The International Civil Aviation Association state that kites are permitted to be flown at a distance of at least one kilometer from airport runways at a maximum height of 20 meters, or two kilometers from the runways at a maximum height of 40 meters, he said.

When contacted on Tuesday, Tangerang Police chief Lt. Col. Pudji Hartanto said flying kites over the airport as a form of protest was "too much".

"Moreover, flying kites near the airport could endanger the planes and therefore is forbidden." (41/bsr)