Unregistered migrants to be expelled from city

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.