Jakarta plans to evict more squatters near railways, dam

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government and the Jakarta administration are planning to dismantle more than 15,000 shanties around railways and the Pluit dam in North Jakarta.

State-owned railway operator PT Kereta Api said Friday illegal properties around railways had disturbed its operations.

"We'll be dismantling approximately 5,220 illegal properties around railways in December, in line with the reviving of circle-line train operations," said the company's public relations head for operation district I, Akhmad Sujadi.

"The company and the city administration will work jointly every day on the evictions. Hopefully, all circle-line tracks will be cleared of shanties by the end of the year."

He said squatters occupied spaces alongside circle-line tracks because those spaces had gone unused for two decades due to low demand.

PT Kereta Api removed 120 shanties around Senen train station and Kemayoran train station, both in Central Jakarta, on Thursday, a day before the circle-line train was launched.

The company also dismantled 660 shanties around Gaplok traditional market in Central Jakarta in January this year, said Akhmad.

The circle-line train runs through five municipalities, beginning at Manggarai train station in South Jakarta and stopping at nine other stations.

The Jakarta Public Works Agency said it would "relocate" squatters currently living in the 10,000 shanties around Pluit dam in North Jakarta next year.

"The squatters around Pluit dam have been littering and clogging the dam," said the agency's water resources and coast development division head, I Gde Nyoman Soeandhi.

"The agency wants to relocate all 70,000 squatters living around dams and riverbanks next year because they have disturbed water flow. But we have a limited budget."

The implementation of the relocation plans, he said, would be the North Jakarta mayor's responsibility.

In response to future mass evictions, Urban Poor Consortium director Wardah Hafidz said both the government and the administration had breached the Habitat II Convention signed in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1996, and the Economic and Social Rights Convention, which Indonesia ratified.

The conventions, she said, prohibited governments from evicting squatters before providing them with "beneficial alternatives".

"What often happens is that either the government or the administration evicts squatters and leaves them with more miserable lives," said Wardah.

"Those evicted often are not able to reach the same social and economic levels they once had. They can't afford low-cost apartments either."

Such apartments, she said, were priced between Rp 90,000 (US$9.60) and Rp 190,000 a month, excluding water and electricity.