Too many evictees for number of apartments
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The City Housing Agency's plan to build 1,100 new low-cost apartment units this year will not be enough to accommodate the number of eviction victims.
The agency planning division head, Suratman, told The Jakarta Post over the weekend that only a small percentage of the evictees could be accommodated at the low-cost apartments due to the city's financial constraints.
A total of 8,715 families were made homeless in a string of evictions last year. The number will increase as the city administration will continue the evictions in other parts of the capital.
The Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) has predicted that at least 8,500 more families will be evicted this year. Some of the victims from last year's evictions have been sheltered at the office of National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) while others have returned to their hometowns.
Suratman said that the low-cost apartments would be built in Kapuk Muara, North Jakarta, and Tipar Cakung, East Jakarta.
The construction of three blocks of a total of 500 units in Kapuk Muara is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. While in Tipar Cakung the city will build five blocks of a total of 600 apartments.
He also stressed that only the evicted people living in surrounding areas would be eligible for the apartments.
The construction of the low-cost apartments is in accordance with the crusade by Governor Sutiyoso to cleanse Jakarta of slums and relocate squatters from state or private land to the apartments.
The imbalanced number of low-cost apartments built by the city and the evictees could leave others homeless. Some of them will be relocated to other low-cost apartments constructed by the Ministry of Settlements and Regional Infrastructure and the state-owned housing company PT Perum Perumnas.
Suratman said that Perumnas had not yet discussed its plan to build low-cost apartments with the agency although it had promised to build apartments for the people evicted from their homes in Cengkareng Timur, West Jakarta, on Sept. 17, 2003.
The Ministry of Settlements and Regional Infrastructure will only build 100 apartments in Pulo Gadung, East Jakarta.
"The number of low-cost apartments built by the two central government institutions is not significant enough to accommodate all of the evictees," Suratman said. "So far, we haven't been given details by Perumnas on its plan to build low-cost houses or apartments."
Data at the housing agency shows there are 19,769 low-cost apartments built in all five municipalities since 1983. However, many of them are not occupied by the eligible recipients.
"If rich people live in the low-cost apartments, the poor people must have sold them to the rich," Suratman surmised, denying reports that his agency's own officers had colluded with the middle-class people who want to live in them or rent them out.