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City to open up sidewalks for street vendors
The city administration will create space for street vendors by providing them with places to sell their goods on sidewalks, starting from next year as part of its efforts to control illegal vendors
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he city administration will create space for street vendors by providing them with places to sell their goods on sidewalks, starting from next year as part of its efforts to control illegal vendors.
Deputy Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama said on Tuesday that the city would make a few adjustments to existing regulations.
The 2007 Public Order Bylaw forbids street vendors from selling their products on pedestrian
walkways.
Despite the bylaw, many street vendors illegally occupy sidewalks and allegedly pay illegal levies to local thugs and Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) officers.
'We will propose adjustments to the bylaw, but either way, this [program] should be carried out no matter what,' Ahok told reporters.
While the policy has been discussed for a while, Ahok said his recent visit to South Korea, during which he observed street vendor management in Gangnam, Seoul, had justified his decision.
'What I saw in Korea assured me and proved my decision made sense. Street vendors should be closer to the places where people socialize or pass by and where are those? Public parks and sidewalks,' Ahok said, adding that the city administration was calculating the ratio of street vendors and sidewalks, as well as the areas that will be opened.
'We're calculating the maximum numbers of street vendors so that pedestrians can still walk comfortably. For instance, we estimated that Monas [the National Monument compound in Central Jakarta] could accommodate 2,800 to 3,000 street vendors ' more than that won't be good for their business,' he said.
Ahok said the city would compile data on the identities of street vendors and impose strict regulations to control them.
'The registered street vendors will be given ID cards issued by [city-owned] Bank DKI and they must write down and remember the names of their five neighbor vendors. They can't hand over their booths to other people and they can't forge ID cards. If they do, we can sue them for violating the Banking Law with a maximum sentence of 12 years in jail,' he said, pointing out the city had prepared 3,000 cards.
Ahok said the city had yet to determine the areas that would be opened, saying that he would instruct subdistrict and district leaders to carry out the task.
'I call on district and subdistrict leaders to decide the areas and the type of products,' he said, adding that the policy would be tried out in 2015.
North Jakarta Mayor Heru Budi Hartono said he had already applied the approach to manage street vendors in his area.
- Ahok says recent visit to Seoul vindicates his decision to let vendors operate on sidewalks
- Bylaw prohibits move, but Ahok wants to revise it
- City yet to determine which sidewalks will be opened up
'The numbers for the Bank DKI ID cards are similar to their national ID cards. The last three numbers of the ID are their booths' numbers. When someone violates it, he can be charged with the Banking Law,' Heru told reporters.
The city, however, acknowledged the challenges it faced.
Jakarta Cooperatives, Small and Medium Enterprises Agency head Joko Kundaryo said Jakarta faced bigger challenges than Seoul, as most sidewalks in Jakarta were inadequate.
'[Seoul] has wide sidewalks, while Jakarta doesn't. So we have to rearrange the sidewalks first. We also have to anticipate things better, so the number of street vendors in one spot won't increase [without the city's permission],' he said.
The city, working with private partners, would also provide entrepreneurial training for street vendors, Joko said.
