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City's homeless children pay hefty price in evictions
Jakarta Post - July 28, 2015
"My mother begged them to stop when heavy equipment began to demolish our house, but they wouldn't listen to her," the 14-year-old told The Jakarta Post recently amid the debris of her house in Pinangsia, West Jakarta.
She said she had no chance to save her books and schoolbag as the eviction was carried out without prior notice.
Having been evicted a day before her final exam, Maharani said the best choice for her was to stay the night at a friend's house to focus on her studies so she could pass the seventh-grade exam. "But how can you study when your house was destroyed just a few hours before?" she said.
A younger student shared similar frustrations. Rendi Ferdinand said besides trying to find his books, he also looked for his shoes and school uniform as soon as the city administration office left the remains of his house, but he could not find them.
Rendi found some solace in the fact that his teachers let him graduate to fourth grade even though he did not show up to take the exam. "My friends at school also showed their support and tried to cheer me up," he said.
Besides demolishing Maharani's and Rendi's houses, more than 500 officers from the Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) tore down at least 112 other buildings located on a riverbank and an early childhood school on May 27. The demolitions were carried out to make way for the Ciliwung River revitalization plan and led to the eviction of hundreds of people.
The Pinangsia case was just one in a string of evictions of riverbank residents this year and last year. The latest data released by the Jakarta Residents Forum (Fakta) show that the administration evicted 13,852 residents from their homes last year as well as ended the business of 2,194 street vendors.
The number of evicted residents was lower than the year before when Fakta recorded 18,496 people evicted, while fewer street vendors, 1,641, were evicted in 2013.
City administration officials said they had offered registered evictees six months' free rent in four low-cost rental apartment (rusunawa) complexes located in Marunda in North Jakarta, Daan Mogot in West Jakarta, Komarudin and Pulogebang, both in East Jakarta.
However, amid a social housing backlog, many residents have been left without alternatives save for erecting tents on the rubble of their homes. Some Pinangsia residents went to Marunda to ask for rental apartments only to be turned away by the management, which said there was a long waiting list.
On the other side of the river, hundreds of homes in Ancol, North Jakarta, were also demolished for a similar reason one week after the eviction in Pinangsia.
For 13-year-old Pandu, the hardest thing about the evictee was seeing his friends leave the neighborhood one by one. He said some of his friends went to their hometowns with their families, while others moved into various low-cost apartments.
"The people who evicted us destroyed not only my home but also my friendships," he said, adding that he previously had a lot of friends to play soccer with every afternoon.
He said that now that Ramadhan was over, his family would also return to their hometown in Karawang, West Java. Pandu said his family would not move to the rusunawa as his grandmother would not be able to walk up or downstairs from the fifth floor apartment that they had been designated.
For the time being, Pandu, his parents and grandmother sleep on the remains of their house, with no roof above them and only a thin mattress under them. "Every night I only have one wish to God. Please don't let the rain pour down tonight."
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