REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA - The Government wil relocate a total of 14,075 families living in slums on the banks of the Ciliwung river in Jakarta to low-cost flats under a government urban revitalization plan, a social ministry official said. "The government is to revitalize Ciliwung river flow areas in the capital city and a program to implement the plan is currently being drawn up," Wawan Mulyawan, director of urban poverty mitigation affairs at the ministry of social service said on Thursday.
The revitalization plan is to be carried out over a three-year period during which the people`s housing ministry was expected to build 29 low-cost flat towers capable of accommodating 34,051 families currently living on the banks of the Ciliwung river in the Indonesian capital.
The relocation of the river bank slum inhabitants will be done in two phases. The first phase will cover four neighborhood wards (kelurahan), namely those of Manggarai (2,390 families), Bukitduri 3,526), Kampung Melayu (7,233), and Kebon Baru (264). In the second phase, the relocation will be done to river bank slum dwellers in the wards of Gedong (387 families) and Tanjung Barat (275).
The social services ministry will be involved in the relocation project by providing assistance to the needy such as the physically infirm and the very poor to prepare them for the move. According to Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) data collected through a census in 2011, Indonesia has 32.02 mullion poor people or 13.33 percent of the population. Of the number, 11.05 million live in urban and the rest in rural areas.