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New fish market leaves many behind
Jacky sits on an orange box next to a stack of fresh fish, waiting for his brother to leave a 2-square-meter space at a newly renovated fish market
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acky sits on an orange box next to a stack of fresh fish, waiting for his brother to leave a 2-square-meter space at a newly renovated fish market.
For the 32-year-old, the last two months have been a perpetual struggle, as now he has to share the narrow space at Muara Angke fish market in North Jakarta.
'Since this space is my brother's, I have to wait for him to sell all his fish before I can use it to sell mine. It's very ineffective for me,' Jacky told The Jakarta Post recently.
His daily profit, he said, could reach up to Rp 500,000 (US$35) on a busy day, but on very quiet days he brought home nothing but unsold fish to his family.
Before the market moved, Jacky claimed he had always made money, even just small amounts, to take home to his wife and their two children.
'Things have changed since the fish market was moved to this new place. A lot of traders have no space here,' he sighed.
In May, the Jakarta administration, on grounds of hygiene, began the demolition of the old Muara Angke fish market located a few hundred meters from the current site.
Following the demolition, almost a thousand fish traders and dozens of food and drink sellers were forced to find temporary trading spaces while the new market was under construction.
When the new market was ready, hundreds of unregistered traders found that they had no space in the new building.
Of the 1,334 trading spots in the new market, the city administration provided 1,243 to 472 registered traders from the old market, each trader receiving between two and four spots. The remaining 91 spots were left to hundreds of unregistered traders through verification and lottery processes.
Rohan Erlan Hakiki is one of the 251 unregistered vendors who passed the verification process, but failed to obtain a spot in the new market. Now, he said, he could only use spaces left vacant by their owners.
'Sometimes some of the traders don't show up, so I can use their space temporarily, but I don't have a fixed income that way,' he said.
Rohan criticized the Muara Angke technical management unit (UPT) for giving the lion's share of the spots to most of the registered vendors and leaving 251 verified unregistered vendors to fight over the remaining 91 spots. He urged the UPT to reconsider its policy.
Separately, Muara Angke UPT head Nugroho Syamsubagiyo said registered traders needed more space because of their high transaction volume and large amounts of fish stored.
'This fish market is a big business with almost 150 tons [of fishes] bought and sold every day, while daily total transactions can reach up to Rp 7 billion. Some of the traders need more than a 2-meter-square area to do business,' Nugroho said.
He insisted that it was impossible to provide more spots to unregistered vendors. 'Ninety-one spots are all we can give them, they must understand that,' he said.
