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Image Finder: Living on the Edge
ON HIS OWN: Rachman, 27, lives alone
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span class="inline inline-none">ON HIS OWN: Rachman, 27, lives alone. He has lived in Pejagalan since 2007. He sent his wife back to his hometown in Sumatra after the eviction. He once worked as a parking attendant, but currently survives doing odd jobs.
Words & Photos Seto Wardhana
Waging war against poverty is not easy; make the wrong move and you will find yourself fighting the poor.
As the nation’s capital, Jakarta beckons as a city of dreams. People come from their hometowns in search of a better life, better income, better education — a better everything. But not every dream becomes a reality. While the city itself is a home to 10 million people, 3.75 percent of its citizens, or about 375,000 people, live below the poverty line.
Living as one of the poor is hard. High living expenses, meager income, or no income at all, low education and poor access to many government facilities push some into a downward spiral. One bad decision can change their lives significantly.
Research from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta) shows there were 113 evictions in the city, affecting 8,145 families and 6,283 businesses, in 2015.
This year, 325 neighborhoods are at risk of forced evictions. It happened on March 1 to residents living under the Tomang-Pluit section of the inner ring road in Pejagalan. The eviction went almost unnoticed because public attention was focused on the most celebrated forced eviction of the year that occurred the previous day a short distance away. On Feb. 29, the administration demolished the Kalijodo neighborhood, home to the notorious, historical red-light district as well as 1,340 families. Kalijodo lies across the river from the community living under the toll road.
Only 202 Kalijodo families with Jakarta identity cards were entitled to rusunawa (low-cost rental apartments) in Pulo Gebang, Marunda and Rawa Bebek.
Unable to find new jobs while having to pay more expenses — transportation costs, apartment rents — some of the tenants returned to the illegal settlements. They join about 150 other families who built shacks under the toll road, atop the debris of their own houses, after the March eviction.
They have lived there for years; some were born there. After the March and February evictions, the toll road community and Kalijodo evictees live in deteriorating conditions. Like the people photographed here in August in Pejagalan, they do odd jobs, such as occasional parking attendants or scavenging for recyclable garbage.
The Jakarta administration is trying to catch up with the rusunawa backlog but finding land in the middle of the city is not easy. In most cases, the evictees are thrown into the apartments, designed without any participation from them, more than 10 kilometers from their jobs, businesses and schools. Some even get apartments 25 kilometers from home, making it difficult for them to get back on their feet from the evictions, let alone lift them sleves out of poverty.
Forced evictions have impoverished the most vulnerable community in the city, a forgotten population that must get by however it can.
