River glow:  Residents enjoy a boat ride along the Pepe River in Surakarta, Central Java, on Thursday evening. Guests pay a mere Rp 10,000 (70 US cents) per person to take in the magical ambience of Chinese New Year celebrations from the lantern-decorated river. (JP/Ganug Nugroho Adi)

The Surakarta municipality plans to evict about 1,400 residents in order to turn a river into a recreational site.

Acting Surakarta mayor Budi Yulistyanto said on Friday that the city administration would soon relocate the 340 families that reside along the banks of Pepe River and move them to low-cost apartments.

'€œWe will also provide them with compensation. We are still calculating the value. We want to move them in a polite manner and not just simply evict them,'€ Budi said.

Residents reportedly accepted the city'€™s plan to remove them to nearby low cost apartments.

In preparation for the Chinese New Year, or Imlek as it is popularly known, the city, which was once led by Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo from 2005 until 2012, has cleaned the river and decorated it with thousands of lamps along its banks, making it a colorful sight at night.

Many domestic and foreign visitors flock to the site to enjoy the sensation of cruising down the river for some 300 meters on a decorative boat.

Some 100 people have enjoyed the trip every night, paying just Rp 10,000 per person for a single trip.

'€œThis will be on offer only during the Imlek celebration until February 15, 2016. We want to offer something new for the Imlek celebration here in Surakarta,'€ Didik Kushendratmo of the celebration'€™s organizing committee said.

Elected Surakarta Mayor FX Hadi '€œRudy'€ Rudyatmo said that the decorative boat was also part of the riverbank spatial arrangement program in the city that aimed at creating clean and healthy rivers.

'€œThis is actually an old program. We want to make people aware that rivers are not trash cans,'€ said Rudy, who was recently reelected for his second term of office.

Meanwhile, historian Mufti Raharjo said that Pepe River was an integral part of the city'€™s history. He said the river had been mentioned in texts since the Pajang Kingdom era in the mid 16th century.

'€œDuring that time, Bengawan Solo River had 44 piers that acted as the veins of trade. One of the piers was on Pepe River,'€ he said.

Over time, however, the small river became dirty and messy as more and more houses were erected along its banks.

In 2014, the Surakarta administration started to improve the river by dredging it for 300 meters. The river has a total length of 7.8 kilometers.

Every month the city administration conducts community service by cleaning rivers.

To help maintain water depth and enable a boat to pass along, while at the same time preventing the river from overflowing during the rainy season, the administration controls the upper part of the Anyar River dam and the Demangan water gate.

Pepe River is getting cleaner and cleaner and is now relatively free from waste and garbage.

'€œI never thought before that I could enjoy going down the river on a boat. The river was very dirty in the past,'€ Hanindyah, a visitor, said.

Irawan, another visitor, said he experienced a special sensation cruising along the river. He said it reminded him of the Hoi An River in Vietnam.

'€œThis is not yet as good as Vietnam, but we can make it like Vietnam,'€ he said.

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