Street vendors willing to be managed, taxed

Street vendors willing to be managed, taxed

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Street vendors, who have long been accused of being a major
source of traffic jams, said they were willing to be managed and
regulated by the city administration.

They said they would obey the regulations and would not object
to paying fees to the administration, so long as they were not
evicted.

"We don't mind if the administration wants to relocate us, and
we are ready to pay the fees. We only ask that the new location
should not be too quiet," said Simorangkir, a street vendor in
the Cawang area, East Jakarta. "But if we are evicted, we would
fight."

The former employee of a state-owned transportation company
explained that street vendors could only make a profit if people
bought their goods. Consequently, they always occupied land at
busy public places, which often caused traffic jams.

Just like Simorangkir, some vendors in Jatinegara, East
Jakarta and at Blok M, South Jakarta, have enthusiastically
responded to the idea of being regulated.

The idea was first mooted by City Cooperatives and Small
Enterprises Agency informal sector division head Sukma Jaya. He
said that the administration planned to legalize some 600,000
street vendors in the city, and tax them Rp 800 to Rp 1,000 each
per day.

But Governor Sutiyoso then played it down, saying that it was
only an idea, while the statistics bureau recorded that fewer
than 200,000 street vendors were here.

Meanwhile leader of the Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) Azas
Tigor Nainggolan urged the administration to manage the vendors
properly in view of their significant contribution to the city.

Based on Fakta's investigations earlier this year, the
hoodlums on Jl. Jatinegara were able to collect Rp 3 million per
day from about 500 vendors.

"You can imagine how much revenue the administration would
gain if it succeeded in managing the vendors here," he said,
adding that the number of street vendors had increased after the
economic crisis hit the country in 1997.

Tigor also asserted that street vendors were an important
element of the social safety net during the crisis as their
activities could absorb many unemployed people.

"The administration should manage them properly, as well as
ban the hoodlums and deal with the corrupt officers who collude
with them," he remarked.

Vendors here claimed that they had to pay certain officers or
hoodlums Rp 100,000 to Rp 600,000 per year for the rent of an
off-street plot of land, or even for an on-street one.

They also have to pay an additional fee every day, of Rp 1,000
to Rp 5,000 for security or waste disposal services, according to
Amrius, a street vendor on Jl. Jatinegara, East Jakarta.

Various groups of hoodlums or officers visit the vendors in
turn to collect the illegal levies from them. Their available
capital is about Rp 1 million at most.

"I couldn't afford the levies, but they threatened to sell the
lot to another person if I didn't pay," Amrius said.