The poor want voice in urban policy making
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
In fear of imminent eviction, poor communities urged the city administration to involve them in designing urban policies to tackling the problem of poverty.
"The city administration should involve poor communities in designing programs to combat poverty as it is they who know well their real problems," said Sarwo, 30, a resident of Penjaringan, North Jakarta, on the sidelines of the Asian People's Dialog 2 on poverty here on Wednesday.
Sarwo said the inclusion of poor communities in city planning could produce alternative and amicable solutions to the problems of urban poverty instead of violent evictions.
Wardah Hafidz, the head of the Urban Poor Consortium, said that in Indonesia poor communities were always excluded by the government in designing urban policies.
"At times, the administration invites poor communities in a pseudo dialogue to design policies but the end result is fruitless for those poor communities," said Wardah, who also participated in the dialog.
The administration should really involve the poor communities in designing urban policies. Otherwise, every policy made by the administration would be disadvantageous for the poor communities, she said.
Both Sarwo and Wardah shared their views in the Asian People's Dialogue 2, which has been also attended by participants from 14 Asian and African countries.
Sarwo, who resides under the flyover in Penjaringan along with 3,000 squatters, revealed that his community have made a miniature model of a community as part of a proposal which could be taken into account by city planners.
Sarwo said the model made by the community also included public facilities like community parks, schools, mosques and public toilets.
"In the model community, we also include green areas which not only help the city administration to beautify the city but also help ease air pollution," Sarwo told The Jakarta Post.
Similarly, Sonia F, a delegate from the Philippines revealed that the participation of the poor communities in city planning had proven successful in reducing problems faced by the urban poor in Manila.
"Poor communities in Manila, for example, could establish a working committee which represents them in designing urban policies along with city planners," said Sonia.
Over 170,000 poor families, Sonia revealed, could obtain land certificates for their houses in Manila, while around 150 hectares were provided by the Philippine government through mortgage, credit and rental schemes thanks partly to the participation of the committees representing those poor communities.
A delegate from Sri Lanka called on the administration to start dialog with poor communities to solve urban problems.
"The administration will find solutions to urban problems if they stop regarding poor people as the problem and instead listen to how the poor people seek solutions for their own problems," the delegate said.
The Sri Lankan delegate also remarked that although similar problems like corruption and the wide gap between the rich and poor were also a reality in his country like Indonesia, the administration could partner with poor communities to compromise in seeking solutions to their common problems.
A delegate from Pakistan revealed that the administration of Karachi, which has 11 million residents and similar problems to Jakarta, had urged poor communities in towns to organize themselves in groups to ease the burden on the administration in solving urban problems.
"Instead of bulldozing those poor communities, the administration considers it necessary to adopt the so-named regularization program by respecting that those poor people have invested lots of money to build their housing and public infrastructure," said the delegate.