Small vendors want a place inside market building

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

"I have sold fruit here for almost 15 years already. We are allowed to do business here because we pay the officials," said Dudung, 51, who opened his small stand on the sidewalk of Jl. Palmerah Utara, while pointing at the city-run Palmerah market building behind him.

Dudung is among the dozens of small scale vendors who sell their merchandises on the street, taking up a great portion of the road and causing traffic congestion in the area not only during peak hours.

"I cannot afford to rent a place inside the building because it would cost me billions of rupiah," Dudung said.

"Here I'm only required to pay Rp 1,000 (11 US cents) in the morning, another Rp 2,000 in the afternoon and Rp 1,000 in the evening to the public order officers and sanitation agency officers," he added.

A similar situation can be seen at Pasar Minggu market in South Jakarta where small vendors, mostly selling fruit and vegetables, take up a portion of the left side of Jl. Ragunan which connects Depok and Pancoran areas.

"We play cat and mouse games with public order officers all the time. We have an agreement with the officers that if their boss shows up to supervise an eviction, we will disappear for three or four days. After that, we come back, pay the officers, and its business as usual," said Budi, 35, who sells fruit on the sidewalk, adding he paid a total of Rp 7,000 each day.

"But it is better than being told to sell in the place provided by the market management at the back of the market building as nobody even bothers to go there," he added.

The head of city market operator PD Pasar Jaya, Prabowo, admitted that his office imposed fees ranging between Rp 5,000 and Rp 7,000 on small scale vendors who do business inside the market compound but not in the building.

"We set high fees because we want those vendors who don't want to rent space inside the market building to move. As a result, some of them have begun to look for other places," Prabowo told The Jakarta Post through phone on Monday.

But the vendors apparently have not moved far away from the market, as more and more vendors are seen around the traditional markets managed by PD Pasar Jaya.

Activist Wardah Hafidz of the Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) deplored the city market operator's policy which she said did not side with the small scale vendors and would only worsen traffic and security problems.

"The city administration should give the vendors strategic spaces which can easily be reached by buyers inside the market building, and not give them kiosks on the upper stories of the building just because the strategic sites had all been taken by big capital traders who are willing to pay more," she told the Post.

She said that most of these small scale vendors were the original inhabitants of the traditional markets.

"These vendors were displaced by the big traders after the city administration built modern market buildings there. Therefore, their interests should be prioritized," she said.