Residents reopen blocked road

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

After making known their demands at a rally at the Tangerang regency administration office in the capital, Tigaraksa, residents of Balaraja, Kresek and Kronjo districts, who had blocked the main road connecting the three districts, reopened the road on Tuesday afternoon.

"The administration had promised that it would resume work on the halted road project and would hose down the street at least twice a day until the road project was completed," said Amin, one of about 200 residents of the three districts who participated in the rally at Tigaraksa.

Meanwhile, Tjetje Syamas, first assistant to the regency administration, who is responsible for regency infrastructure development, said that the repair work would start in 10 days' time.

"During the next ten days, we'll carefully select three good contractors that will work together on the 12 kilometers of damaged road," he said.

Thousand of residents in the three districts blocked the main road on Monday to demand the administration repair the damaged artery from Ceplak market, Balaraja to Kronjo district, preventing the passage of all vehicles, apart from motorcycles.

Residents of villages along the road placed oil drums, logs, bamboo fences, tires and stones in the street, and also erected several bamboo food stalls in the middle of the road to block any cars that attempted to travel between the districts.

The local residents had become angry because the administration had left the road unsurfaced for so long that during the dry season, cars passing along the busy road always kicked up dust, which, they claimed, was causing respiratory disease among many of them, mostly their children.

The road repair project, costing Rp 12 billion, was entrusted to CV Cipadang Jaya Baya, which began the work in June 2001. As the contractor had only completed 22 percent of the work by Nov. 20, 2002, and the project deadline was on Dec. 31, 2002, the administration canceled the contract.