UPC slams city for not assisting non-registered poor
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The city administration's policy to exempt poor people without identity cards from the poverty eradication program breached human rights and the 1945 constitution, an activist of a non- governmental organization said over the weekend.
"It's obviously against human rights as well as a citizen's rights as stipulated in our Constitution," Urban Poor Consortium (UPC) chairwoman Wardah Hafidz said.
Citing Article 27 of the 1945 Constitution, Wardah said that most poor people who moved to Jakarta to seek employment were protected by the Constitution, which stipulated that every citizen had the right to a proper livelihood.
She lambasted the city administration, which very often treated the urban poor unfairly, despite the fact that they, like the other residents, deserved assistance from the government.
"Such discriminative treatment of poor people is common by the administration simply to force them out of the city to ease overcrowding here," Wardah said.
She was commenting on the report of the Jakarta Statistics Office that more than 100,000 poor people in the city did not have identity cards and therefore were not entitled to assistance.
Many of them were born and raised in the city, but due to their inability to produce ID cards, they have no access to public services, including free health services, cheap rice, soft loans or other assistance from the administration.
The Office reported last Thursday the results of a 2000 survey that found the total population in the capital was 8.38 million, with the total of absolute poor at some 340,000. Of the total impoverished people, 32,983 poor families or more than 100,000 people did not have ID cards.
But she said the number of poor people without ID cards in the city could be five times greater than the 100,000 people. "It must be far more than only 100,000. It could be five times higher," she said.
"This is an attempt by the city administration to conceal the poverty problem by discounting their existence here," she said.
Wardah gave as an example the slum in Kampung Sawah in Cilincing, North Jakarta, where more than 2,000 poor families lived, 70 percent of whom did not have ID cards.
She said the discriminative treatment would not force the poor to return to their hometowns or discourage them from coming to Jakarta. Instead, such treatment would only incite stronger opposition from the poor.
"As long as the fundamental problem, which is chronic unemployment in regions, remains untouched, any efforts to eradicate poverty would be futile," she said.
The head of the City Population Agency, Sylviana Murni, insisted that her office would still require those applying for new ID cards to submit official statements from their region of origin and proof of current residence and occupation.
"We won't issue any new ID cards unless they fulfill these conditions as stipulated in the bylaw," said Sylviana, referring to Bylaw No. 1/1996 on the registration of the population.
Sylviana also refused to exempt poor people, who have no ID cards from the requirements by saying that: "The administration would first have to revise the bylaw."
Sidiq, 39, is a poor person who moved to Jakarta from his hometown in Palembang, South Sumatra, in search of a better life. But he is still living out in the open with his cart.
"I can't afford to rent a house with my low income of Rp 30,000 (US$3.40) a day," Sidiq said.
"I have applied for a temporary ID card twice. But I still had to face raids from the administration. It's useless to have an ID card," said Sidiq, adding that he paid Rp 10,000 for each ID card. Sidiq has decided not to apply for another one.
The administration estimates that about 250,000 people from other provinces migrate to the capital every year.