Nowhere to go:  Two children stare at the demolished Master School in Depok in West Java on Friday. The city administration has demolished a part of the free school to make way for the integrated Depok terminal, which will incorporate a shopping center. (JP/foy)

Around 250 kindergarten and junior high school students at Master School, a free school located at Depok bus terminal in West Java, were forced to cram into a nearby mosque on Friday to continue their study after the Depok administration and developer PT Andyka Investa dismantled their classrooms.

Astriyani, 12, a seventh grader, said that she and her friends had been using the mosque to study since Monday.

'€œI want my classroom back. It was more comfortable than the mosque,'€ she told The Jakarta Post.

Established in 2001, Master School is an informal school inside Depok Terminal in West Java. It has 25 rooms including a staff room and a computer lab built from six recycled shipping containers.

The school currently has a total of 1,800 students, most of whom work in and around the station as street vendors or musicians. Others simply have nowhere else to go.

A number of its graduates have gone on to prestigious universities, such as the University of Indonesia (UI) in Depok and Jakarta State University (UNJ) in East Jakarta. Others have won scholarships to Newcastle University in the UK and to a college in Jordan.

However, last Saturday, the Depok administration and the developer cleared an area of 1,800 square meters of the school, demolishing 12 classrooms, comprising four kindergarten classes and eight junior high school classes, to develop the Depok Integrated Bus Terminal, which will include a shopping center and a hotel.

According to Master School founder Nurrohim, the eviction was contradictory to an agreement he signed on Jan. 14 with the administration and the company stipulating that there would be no eviction until the administration provided new classrooms.

'€œWe support the redevelopment of the terminal. We only want them to help us find new classrooms before eviction because the students need somewhere to study,'€ Nurrohim said.

Since 2013, the Depok administration has planned to clear 2,000 sqm of the 6,000 sqm plot of land currently used by the school.

The 2,000 sqm plot of land in question, Nurrohim said, was owned by the administration, but urged the authorities not to demolish buildings arbitrarily.

On July 19, 2013, Depok Mayor Nur Mahmudi Ismail claimed that the administration would not evict the school, but would relocate a mosque and a room used by kindergarten students to a larger, more comfortable area behind the school, saying that the administration would always support the school management'€™s efforts to improve the quality of education for students.

Nurrohim said that the administration had indeed provided a container to replace 12 rooms on a 250 sqm plot of land behind the school, but had not yet started to build the new rooms within the container when the eviction began.

The nearby mosque, he went on, would serve temporarily as a place to study.

The eviction is set to go on, with the school'€™s musholla or prayer-room next in line. The room is used by 450 elementary school students five days a week to pray and study the Koran.

'€œWe never ask for any compensation, so please don'€™t take away the children'€™s place of study,'€ Nurrohim said.

The Depok administration and Andyka Investa signed a build, operate and transfer (BOT) contract on the terminal redevelopment project at the end of last year.

Andyka Investa spokesman Muttaqin said the company hoped to start the project, worth Rp 1.3 trillion (US$91 million), by the end of this year.

Based on the contract, the company will have the authority to manage the terminal and fully own the assets for 25-30 years.

The Depok administration could not be reached for comment on Friday. (foy)

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