Residents reopen blocked road
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.