Unregistered migrants to be expelled from city

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Sardi, 38, has been selling fried cakes around the capital since he got married in 1983. He is still doing the same job to feed his wife and five children, who live far away in the Central Java regency of Bumi Ayu.

Sardi is one of over 100,000 urban poor living in the city who have no identity cards. These people could end up losing their livelihoods as Governor Sutiyoso is now trying to draft a bylaw aimed at kicking them out of the city.

Having the population bill being drafted by the city administration passed is one of Sutiyoso's main policies to be implemented during the first year of his second-five-year term.

Sardi, who looks older than he really is, said he still did not know what he would do if the City Council agreed with Sutiyoso and passed the bylaw, which will be used by the City Administration to expel people like Sardi from the city.

Sutiyoso has tried to get rid of people working in the informal sector who have no identity cards by conducting raids all over the city.

The latest move has involved Sutiyoso asking other governors to urge their citizens who live in Jakarta to return home if they do not have permanent jobs here. But he claimed all his efforts so far had not been effective due to the lack of a firm legal basis.

"If we have the new bylaw, we'll have the legal basis ... (to expel them from Jakarta) ... Our target is that they should return to their hometowns," Sutiyoso told the press on Tuesday.

Sardi could save some Rp 10,000 every day on average. But working as a cake vendor was not his job of choice. He said that he was bored with his job, especially as he had to live far away from his family. But it was hard to find a job in his wife's hometown.

"If I could get Rp 5,000 a day in Bumiayu, I would not come here. I would work as a farm laborer, but such work is not available everyday while my children need food everyday," he said.

Sardi has been living in Jakarta since the 1970s after he completed his elementary education in his hometown in Kuningan regency, West Java.

He now sells his food in the National Monument (Monas) park. He said that he was confused as the authorities had been warning that he would not be allowed to operate in the park after the fencing project was completed.

Before starting his business in Monas park, he moved around from one construction site to another as construction workers were his main customers.

The census held by the Jakarta Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) in 2000 showed that 32,983 poor families, or over 100,000 people, did not have Jakarta ID cards.

Asas Tigor Nainggolan of the Jakarta Residents' Forum (Fakta) said that Sutiyoso's determination to pass the bylaw on population confirmed that he was a "human rights criminal".

He said that such a bylaw would not only be against human rights, but also against the national constitution and international conventions on the economic rights of citizens.

"Principally, the government cannot restrict the movement of the people. The state cannot prohibit people from seeking jobs and the state should not expel people from the places where they work, even in the informal sector. Therefore, it is crazy if Sutiyoso wants the City Council to pass the bylaw," he added.