T

he Jakarta administration says it will prioritize street vendors who are Jakarta residents in its relocation plan.

Deputy Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama said at City Hall on Friday that the administration would relocate street vendors randomly doing business in public spaces.

Basuki said the city was now recording the number of street vendors across the city to see how many spaces it needed for them.

He said, however, the city would be unable to accommodate all of them. '€œWe will give a chance to all of them but our priority will be Jakarta residents,'€ he said, adding that the administration welcomed outsiders as street vendors as long as the space was available.

Jakarta is home to thousands of street vendors who mostly hail from neighboring cities.

Basuki said the city was initially seeking the spaces, for example, inside the markets run by city-owned market operator PD Pasar Jaya.

'€œMany of their markets are empty. It would be better if the street vendors utilized those vacant lots,'€ he said.

Many ideas have been proposed to resolve the problems, such as traffic congestion, caused by street vendors stationed at almost every corner in the city.

Basuki once announced that the city would build a shopping mall, especially for street vendors.

Progress in the plan has been slow with the space-availability issue being the biggest challenge.

He said he would provide spaces in the low-cost apartments now being built in some areas for street vendors.

'€œThe apartments will be integrated buildings where vendors can also run their businesses on one of the floors,'€ he said.

Basuki said subdistrict and district heads were also now searching for more plots of land to be converted into apartment buildings for low-income families.

Jakarta Cooperatives, Small and Medium Enterprises and Trade Agency chief Ratna Ningsih said her agency was still discussing the plan.

'€œWe do have plans but I cannot mention any developments as they are still under discussion,'€ she said.

Regulating street vendors in crowded business hubs in Jakarta has long been a cat-and-mouse activity.

Vendors in Tanah Abang market in Central Jakarta, for example, always return to their original pitches along the streets around the market after being evicted by Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) personnel and being relocated inside the market.

However, the process of relocating vendors from Pasar Minggu bus station in South Jakarta went relatively smoothly as all the vendors moved willingly.

The city is now also trying to cooperate with private firms, through corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes, to provide space and facilities for street vendors in 23 locations.