TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsGraves over homes: Jakarta’s cemetery crisis pushes out poor residents
To deal with the shortage of burial plots for the dead, Jakarta is planning to revitalize and expand several public cemeteries across the city at the expense of poor residents who have lived among the graves on city-owned land for decades.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
A man walks in front of his home on Tuesday inside the Menteng Pulo II public cemetery (TPU) in East Jakarta. The Jakarta administration is relocating 105 families residing inside the cemetery to Jagakarsa Rusunawa (low-cost rental apartment) in a bid to resolve the shortage of burial plots for the dead in the city. (Antara/Fauzan)
A
s Jakarta struggles to find places to bury its dead, the city administration is pushing a plan to evict hundreds of households from poor neighborhoods in West and East Jakarta to make way for plans to restore and expand public cemeteries (TPU).
The plan comes following a shortage of burial land in Jakarta, with at least 69 of the capital’s 80 TPU full. Some of the remaining 11 cemeteries are at over 80 percent capacity, leaving only 118,000 graves that may dwindle quickly in the next few years.
To solve the issue, the city administration is planning to relocate people who have been living near cemeteries for years to make way for new graves. Moving 280 families occupying the Rawa Bunga and Kebon Nanas TPU in East Jakarta, for example, may give enough room for 450 and 1,500 new graves, respectively.
In West Jakarta, where the municipality is strained by the limited availability of burial plots, the city administration is planning to expand the Pegadungan TPU in Kalideres district. To do this, authorities would need to evict at least 127 households occupying the 65-hectare Kampung Bilik neighborhood, located next to the already-full cemetery.
Kampung Bilik is home to mostly semipermanent buildings and bamboo houses owned by residents who do not hold land certificates, making them more vulnerable to eviction. The land is owned by the Jakarta Parks and Forestry Agency, according to an information board installed in the area.
Read also: Accommodating the dead: Jakarta faces grave shortage crisis
The Kamal subdistrict administration has announced to Kampung Bilik residents that the city is planning to expand and renovate Pegadungan, as parts of the land are reportedly occupied by the residents. The announcement was put in a letter dated Nov. 17 seen by The Jakarta Post on Monday.
