Marunda, North Jakarta, duck market vendors are worried they will have no place to do business once the city plan to move poultry related businesses to the outskirts of Jakarta goes into effect, reportedly in April.
“It’s not the eviction that concerns us, we are only worried if the government kicks us out without providing a new place to establish a new marketplace,” one vendor, who declined to be named, said Saturday.
He added that the existing duck market on Jl. Sungai Landak, Marunda, Cilincing, was well-known and very strategic for business.
“We do not know whether this policy is meant as part of efforts to eradicate bird flu or simply because we developed the market on land to which we have no legal right,” another vendor, who also wished to remain anonymous, told The Jakarta Post.
The duck market was established in early 1990 on land owned by PT Kawasan Berikat Nusantara (PT KBN). At that time, PT KBN started actions to evict the market vendors who sell mostly ducks; entog, a duck-chicken hybrid; chickens and geese. However, the company eventually gave the vendors permission to continue using the land for an unspecified period of time.
In 2009, the city announced it was formulating an ordinance prohibiting residents from keeping free-range poultry to stop the spread of bird flu in the capital, but the law has yet to be drafted.
The plan was to have no more live poultry in Jakarta by April 2010 by relocating all slaughterhouses and poultry markets to locations far from the city center.
Up to now, however, the government has yet to inform the duck vendors in Marunda as to when the policy will actually go into effect. (ipa)
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